I hope he comes back to his old self. Not likely but I still hope for the best. The bitterness shows in him.

But then he had nothing to lose, so he says all kinds of crazy stuff to get attention.

I actually agree with Cornel West, on the issues. But the style that he uses to present it would be politically toxic for Bernie Sanders to touch.

It hurts to actually say that, because I sympathize with Dr. West. I've read one of his books, and I think he truly sees himself as fighting for justice and he has done a lot of good work.

But Bernie Sanders should not touch that with a ten foot pole.

things past their due date. He had a fresh perspective at one time, but has soured.

It hurt his friend Dyson too, who wrote this amazing article: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121550/cornel-wests-rise-fall-our-most-exciting-black-scholar-ghost It also led to some riveting counter articles and a follow up piece by Dyson.

Bitter clown.

.. about other people and their policies while enjoying the 1% privileged life of a tenured Ivy League professor, who hasnt peoduced a real piece of scholarship in years.

The man is a fraud.

he comes to dc w his mother and his brother just EXPECTING to have tickets for the inauguration? what kind of dipshit does that?

yeah, i'm thinkin this is not the guy for bernie to expect to get the support of the black community. does he still have any cred after 6 years of trashing the first black president?

...than West ever has. West was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and lived in Sacramento, where his father was a contractor for the Defense Department.

There's no doubt West is a very smart, accomplished man...but his nasty rhetoric to undercut and dismiss Obama is offensive.

That's cold.

Good!

Cold! Like "Ouch!". Rofl!

lovemydog~

I do however agree that his recent comments are over the top. Mr. West is not a dullard - but I do think he frequently drops his hyperbole hybrid into high gear.

I think he is just disappointed and takes a seriously ass backward way of expressing it.

By do it here too, do you mean treat the president with jealous indignation or that people drop their hyperbole hybrid into high gear?

I am being sincere, I was curious which part of my reply pertains to some do it too here.

I am trying to notice!

No problemo. I was being snarky by saying that some other posters do it here at DU all the time. My guess is that you've notice it as well.

I thought my reply to you might been a bit of a jerk comment. I didn't intend it that way and glad you didn't receive it that way!

I have noticed what you say though - some folks seem to add nothing to the discussion but vitriol. That gets us nowhere.

Cheers!

It's great seeing newer people here who are smart and want to tone down the vitriol. I was talking with friend about it on the phone this evening. She's pretty optimistic that younger people especially want to tone down the harsh rhetoric. If that's true, and if younger people vote, I'm pretty optimistic about breaking though some of the vitriol. I just hope all democrats can turn out in Congressional and State elections too, because they are vitally important.

I'm new here but in my 40s as far as my years. I do think the younger people I work with are getting on board. I think it happens every generation or so. I just hope we can keep the young among us engaged. I don't feel they appreciate getting duped nor can be duped as easily as our/your generation.

Nice to talk with you!

He is a narcissist who suffers in the knowledge that he will never achieve what Obama has.

I really felt duped almost right from the get-go.

This does in no way make me side with Mr. West's comments but I too was disappointed quite early. It didn't stop me from voting for him again though.

I wonder if Mr. West did?

Inauguration and it's only gone down the gutter abyss from there.

“Calling Obama a ‘global George Zimmerman’?No. No.”: Michael Eric Dyson sounds off on Cornel West, Obama & his critics

The Georgetown University scholar and author reflects on his very public break with his mentor turned tormentor

snip//

When African-American friends defended the president, he went in on them. West called MSNBC’s Perry “a liar and a fraud,” claimed Sharpton was the “bona fide house negro of the Obama plantation,” and attacked “the Michael Dysons and others who’ve really prostituted themselves intellectually in a very, very ugly and vicious way.”

It’s true that as Dyson’s TNR piece bemoans the nasty ad hominem nature of West’s attacks on Obama, as well as on him and his colleagues, he gave almost as good as he got, first praising West as “the most exciting black scholar ever,” then charting his intellectual decline. “His greatest opponent isn’t Obama, Sharpton, Harris-Perry, or me,” the Georgetown scholar’s article concludes. “It is the ghost of a self that spits at him from his own mirror.”


http://www.salon.com/2015/04/22/calling_obama_a_global_george_zimmerman_no_no_michael_eric_dyson_sounds_off_on_cornel_west_obama_his_critics/

Let's hope Bernie is more in touch with the Black Community than hooking up with ol nasty mouth.

let go of some good people such as Donahue and Olbermann. I don't watch the channel anymore but their SOP is to defend the Obama administration. His criticism is clearly ideological if you follow it, he'd be better off toning down the rhetoric but the point he's making is he is another neoliberal, another Clinton.

This whole snub thing -- they are selective choosing something West says himself but out of context focusing that he's just jealous but that his complete statement tells a different story.

----

“I have to take some responsibility,” he admits of his support for Obama as we sit in his book-lined office. “I could have been reading into it more than was there.

“I was thinking maybe he has at least some progressive populist instincts that could become more manifest after the cautious policies of being a senator and working with [Sen. Joe] Lieberman as his mentor,” he says. “But it became very clear when I looked at the neoliberal economic team. The first announcement of Summers and Geithner I went ballistic. I said, ‘Oh, my God, I have really been misled at a very deep level.’ And the same is true for Dennis Ross and the other neo-imperial elites. I said, ‘I have been thoroughly misled, all this populist language is just a facade. I was under the impression that he might bring in the voices of brother Joseph Stiglitz and brother Paul Krugman. I figured, OK, given the structure of constraints of the capitalist democratic procedure that’s probably the best he could do. But at least he would have some voices concerned about working people, dealing with issues of jobs and downsizing and banks, some semblance of democratic accountability for Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats who are just running amuck. I was completely wrong.”

West says the betrayal occurred on two levels.

“There is the personal level,” he says. “I used to call my dear brother [Obama] every two weeks. I said a prayer on the phone for him, especially before a debate. And I never got a call back. And when I ran into him in the state Capitol in South Carolina when I was down there campaigning for him he was very kind. The first thing he told me was, ‘Brother West, I feel so bad. I haven’t called you back. You been calling me so much. You been giving me so much love, so much support and what have you.’ And I said, ‘I know you’re busy.’ But then a month and half later I would run into other people on the campaign and he’s calling them all the time. I said, wow, this is kind of strange. He doesn’t have time, even two seconds, to say thank you or I’m glad you’re pulling for me and praying for me, but he’s calling these other people. I said, this is very interesting. And then as it turns out with the inauguration I couldn’t get a ticket with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration. My mom says, ‘That’s something that this dear brother can get a ticket and you can’t get one, honey, all the work you did for him from Iowa.’ Beginning in Iowa to Ohio. We had to watch the thing in the hotel.

“What it said to me on a personal level,” he goes on, “was that brother Barack Obama had no sense of gratitude, no sense of loyalty, no sense of even courtesy, [no] sense of decency, just to say thank you. Is this the kind of manipulative, Machiavellian orientation we ought to get used to? That was on a personal level.”

But there was also the betrayal on the political and ideological level.

“It became very clear to me as the announcements were being made,” he says, “that this was going to be a newcomer, in many ways like Bill Clinton, who wanted to reassure the Establishment by bringing in persons they felt comfortable with and that we were really going to get someone who was using intermittent progressive populist language in order to justify a centrist, neoliberalist policy that we see in the opportunism of Bill Clinton. It was very much going to be a kind of black face of the DLC [Democratic Leadership Council].”

Obama and West’s last personal contact took place a year ago at a gathering of the Urban League when, he says, Obama “cussed me out.” Obama, after his address, which promoted his administration’s championing of charter schools, approached West, who was seated in the front row.

“He makes a bee line to me right after the talk, in front of everybody,” West says. “He just lets me have it. He says, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, saying I’m not a progressive. Is that the best you can do? Who do you think you are?’ I smiled. I shook his hand. And a sister hollered in the back, ‘You can’t talk to professor West. That’s Dr. Cornel West. Who do you think you are?’ You can go to jail talking to the president like that. You got to watch yourself. I wanted to slap him on the side of his head.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/the_obama_deception_why_cornel_west_went_ballistic_20110516

I choose to pay attention when Cornell West has something to say rather than someone else speaking for him as if he'd be pro drone policy, pro whatever he's criticizing.

--
No, the thing is he posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free. And yet, you know, he acted as if he was both a progressive and as if he was concerned about the issues of serious injustice and inequality and it turned out that he’s just another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair. And that’s a very sad moment in the history of the nation because we are—we’re an empire in decline. Our culture is in increasing decay. Our school systems are in deep trouble. Our political system is dysfunctional. Our leaders are more and more bought off with legalized bribery and normalized corruption in Congress and too much of our civil life. You would think that we needed somebody—a Lincoln-like figure who could revive some democratic spirit and democratic possibility.
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/24/cornel_west_he_posed_as_a_progressive_and_turned_out_to_be_counterfeit_we_ended_up_with_a_wall_street_presidency_a_drone_presidency/

Bill Maher chooses to obsess on the same topic every episode. One month he had Ben Affleck, Rula Jerabel (not sure if spelled correctly), and Cornel West in seemingly consecutive weeks discussing the same thing. Cornell West actually got Bill Maher to say something brilliant, "I"m with him" followed by "colonization has something to do with it"
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/%E2%80%98don%E2%80%99t-throw-religion-out-of-the-mix%E2%80%99-maher-clashes-with-cornel-west-over-islam/

On the point of your subject line. IMO -- I think he should take Cornell West's advice specifically on matters of foreign policy because certainly Sanders is better than average but over an 18+ year career he's had some troubling stances, even on some where I agree with him but for different reasons on those reasons I can't tell if he is uninformed (like advocating for Saudi Arabia to lead to fight against ISIS which to me is like like advocating Hitler to lead a war against Neo-Nazis) but he's had the right ideas on the Iraq war and the right idea in co-sponsoring sanctions in Burma which is one of the leading countries on genocide watch. What I worry about is him becoming yet another phony hypocrite on matters of foreign policy but I'm inclined to trust his ethics, morals, and hopefully he'd scale back on these dirty trade partnerships like we have with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar (World Cup workers is nothing new to the Department of Defense & oil & gas companies). Cornell West is about the closest person to me ideologically when it comes to American foreign policy but is far more brilliant than me in discussing these views but in full agreement with what he's saying.

Just look at USAID, for just one tiny example of corruption & misery for profit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_International_Development#Controversies_and_criticism

Classic signs of a narcissist.

From the first link you posted:

“There is the personal level,” he says. “I used to call my dear brother every two weeks. I said a prayer on the phone for him, especially before a debate. And I never got a call back. And when I ran into him in the state Capitol in South Carolina when I was down there campaigning for him he was very kind. The first thing he told me was, ‘Brother West, I feel so bad. I haven’t called you back. You been calling me so much. You been giving me so much love, so much support and what have you.’ And I said, ‘I know you’re busy.’ But then a month and half later I would run into other people on the campaign and he’s calling them all the time. I said, wow, this is kind of strange. He doesn’t have time, even two seconds, to say thank you or I’m glad you’re pulling for me and praying for me, but he’s calling these other people. I said, this is very interesting. And then as it turns out with the inauguration I couldn’t get a ticket with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration. My mom says, ‘That’s something that this dear brother can get a ticket and you can’t get one, honey, all the work you did for him from Iowa.’ Beginning in Iowa to Ohio. We had to watch the thing in the hotel.

“What it said to me on a personal level,” he goes on, “was that brother Barack Obama had no sense of gratitude, no sense of loyalty, no sense of even courtesy, sense of decency, just to say thank you. Is this the kind of manipulative, Machiavellian orientation we ought to get used to? That was on a personal level.”


http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/the_obama_deception_why_cornel_west_went_ballistic_20110516

because Cornell West says he isn't a progressive as if the facts don't speak for themselves. With that together (they are using one but not the other) his endorsement is sought out & shows up to rallies with him but after the votes are counted he surrounds himself with the wrong kind of people which by-itself would be one thing but he angrily confronts him because he says he is not a progressive like he wants him to say "Obama is a progressive".

Jon Stewart's 2010 Candidate Obama debates President Obama was much better but on the ideological level it isn't like he's inventing stuff out of thin air.

He might as well be, for all the help he would be to Sanders in this campaign.

I realized it as soon as I typed it and thought I changed it to Cornell but can't remember exactly why I didn't. I guess was thinking too far ahead before having the presence of mind to change it before the rest of the post but after the shower and coming back to read this I don't remember or even why I typed Allen. I had Alvin Gentry on my mind recently but couldn't think of an Allen. I did a search because the name still struck me as familiar and all I can say is when I make a mistake, I make them badly.

At a town hall meeting in Palm City, Florida on April 11, 2012, West was asked by a man in the audience, "What percentage of the American legislature do you think are card carrying Marxists or International Socialists?" West responded that "there's about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party that are members of the Communist Party." When asked to name them, he replied "It's called the Congressional Progressive Caucus."[57]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_West_%28politician%29

But I think he retired from Princeton a few years ago.

Regardless - its pretty well known in "Horse Country" that he doesn't "rub shoulders" if you will.

He doesn't do community activism - he doesn't engage in charitable actions. Notice I used the word "actions". Because I do - I have very little patience for pretty words and philosophy. Too often that doesn't translate into "how can I help the Dunkin Donuts cashier while D.C., Trenton, and pundits duke it out."

He's a classic example of a litte less talk and a lot more action.