An Interview with Bob Moses . . .

Brother Smiley and Doctor West speak with education and civil rights activist Bob Moses here ...

President Obama, Doctor West, Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Tradition

Political Traditions are crucially important. They are in some respects a non-renewable resource. We are thus well advised to protect them from manipulation. So, while I am not nearly as eloquent as Doctor West, and while I do not agree with everything he says here - mostly because my own religious commitments are roughly non-existent - I nonetheless find it ironic that Obama is seeking to lay claim to the tradition of the struggle for civil rights via a symbolic appropriation of Martin Luther King, Jr.. The irony is two-fold. First, as Doctor West points out the President's party and policies are rife with that Doctor King would find deeply objectionable. There is no need to recount the items. But even the sanitized version of King that I have repeatedly complained about here over the years would surely resist being recruited into the mainstream of the contemporary Democratic political establishment. And, second, it is important to remember that, notwithstanding his accomplishments and stature, Dr. King's relationship to 'the movement' in fact was fraught with conflict and contestation. I have mentioned that here before as well.  The inauguration today is yet another attempt to sanitize the American political tradition and it's debt to African Americans.
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P.S.: And if you think that centrists like Obama are the only ones seeking to appropriate the King legacy, have a look at this post and the various links it contains.

An Interview with Cornel West ...

... here at Counterpunch. It overlaps in many ways with this conversation on Smiley & West this afternoon. For my taste, Dr. West is often a bit long on histrionics, much too long on Christian rhetoric, and too short on analysis. I do appreciate his pushing us to attend to the poor and working classes in America. That said, most poor people are not black. Most African Americans are not poor. Same goes for Hispanics. Most poor people - in absolute numbers - are white. (Source.) So, while I am impressed by Dr. West's discussion of - and openness to -  OWS, and I largely agree with his views on Obama's policies, foreign and domestic, I think that an anti-austerity, anti-poverty political program needs to appeal to a multi-racial constituency. Dr. West does too, I suspect.

Reading Around

To start, I want to call your attention to an incisive assessment of the Obama presidency by my colleague Robb Westbrook that appeared early this fall in The Christian Century (20 September 2011). It is entitled "The Liberal Agony: Why There was No New New Deal." Robb does so much in so short a space that I won't try to indicate the good bits. Unfortunately, the essay is behind a wall and it only just showed up on the UR library subscription this past week. This is a must read analysis!

There is an interview with the always smart and entertaining Cornel West here at The Washington Post. Annotation: I like the distinction he draws between "a deodorized Martin Luther King Jr. who is easily assimilable to the American mainstream" and "the real funky Martin" who "was a threat," who "created unease." I've made a similar point here on numerous occasions but not as eloquently.

There is an interesting interview here at In These Times with economist Nancy Folbre in which she advocates for "on stronger collective commitments to the development of human capabilities and efforts to strengthen families and communities."

There is a long-ish set of reflections here by Rebecca Solnit in which she looks hard at OWS and why eschewing violence makes the movement "unconventionally dangerous" - threatening in precisely the way Dr. West depicts MLK.

The Thomas Court?!?

"In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, [Clarence] Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court. Since the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in 2005, and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., in 2006, the Court has moved to the right when it comes to the free-speech rights of corporations, the rights of gun owners, and, potentially, the powers of the federal government; in each of these areas, the majority has followed where Thomas has been leading for a decade or more. Rarely has a Supreme Court Justice enjoyed such broad or significant vindication.

[. . .]

The implications of Thomas’s leadership for the Court, and for the country, are profound. Thomas is probably the most conservative Justice to serve on the Court since the nineteen-thirties. More than virtually any of his colleagues, he has a fully wrought judicial philosophy that, if realized, would transform much of American government and society."

That is the thesis of an essay by Jeff Toobin in The New Yorker this week - you can find it here. The essay examines the possibility that Clarence Thomas's vision may be the undoing of Obama's health-insurance-reform-law. Perhaps Cornel West is not criticizing the most influential "Brother" in American politics after all?

Brother West (2)

Today, The New York Times ran this pointed Op-Ed by Cornel West. I have posted on 'Brother West' here numerous times. And each time I say that while I don't agree with all of his assessments I very much admire his outspokenness. That remains true. I appreciate his willingness to speak out for the poor and for the working people in America. I also appreciate how Dr. West speaks for an un-sanitized interpretation of Martin Luther King and his radical political and economic agenda. Dr. King indeed must be viewing not just the hardships created by our current economic disaster but the paralysis of our political leaders in the face of that hardship with outrage.

Brother West

Cornel West. Photograph © Christian Oth
for The New York Times.

I missed this snippet of an interview with 'Brother West' last month. He has a large personality and I don't agree with all of his judgements. But his take on the Obama administration seems to me just about right. And I appreciate his willingness to speak out for the poor and the working class.

What Did We Learn About Politics Today?

The first thing we learned is about irony. It was ironic to learn that John Boehner's budget cutting plan - which would've been dead in the water anyhow - really was dead when the CBO announced that the cuts he proposes would not be quite so deep and draconian as he announced. And it was even more ironic to learn from the very same CBO that the putatively Democratic plan advanced by Harry Reid in the Senate would actually cut more deeply than would Boehner's! So, it is not just that the Senate plan is not "balanced" in the sense of approaching the task of deficit reduction by including both tax revenues and spending cuts (it relies solely on the latter), but it actually cuts more than the Republican leadership in the House would like. (Read the report here.) Call all that bi-partisanship in action.

The second thing we learned is that this bi-partisanship takes aim dead at the foreheads of working Americans - or should I say Americans who are not working due to the depression. Spending cuts will have a negative impact on an already depressed labor market. (Report here.) No self-respecting Democrat is saying anything about that. So, thank the lord for Brother West! He is taking his 'call out the President for abandoning working and poor America' show on the road. Not only are the democrats out-doing the republicans at the reactionary deficit reduction by spending cuts game, they are screwing their own putative "base." That would be ironic too, if it were not so predictably pathetic.

Finally we learned about the power of capitalists and their ideologists. What we are worried about - after all, there is no evidence we are worried about the poor and the working classes, those who will bear the brunt of all the deficit reduction shenanigans - are the investors in the bond markets. We already know that they can withhold investment to signal their displeasure. But we're now being threatened by rating agencies too. Standard and Poor's is threatening to downgrade the rating on U.S. Treasury Bonds. If you ignore all of the other links in this post, I urge you to check out this commentary by Robert Reich. Credit rating agencies are accountable to precisely no one. But they sure are throwing their weight around. No irony in that.

One useful thing I did learn is that we really don't need the debt ceiling at all. It turns out that lots of other perfectly functional capitalist political economic systems work perfectly well without any such legal constraint. Read about it here. But why be sensible?

Debating Obama & His Policies

There has, over the past few weeks, been a set of fairly vituperative encounters among black intellectuals and politicians regarding the Obama administration. Not long ago there was the on-air dust up between Cornel West and Al Sharpton with the latter defending the Obama administration in the face of the former's frank criticisms. That prompted a visit to Princeton (West's place of employment) by interim head of the Democratic National Committee, Donna Brazile aimed at sorting out the issues.

Apparently the professor and the politico have agreed to disagree. West just has published this interview in which he remains resolutely critical of Obama and his policies. He characterizes the president as providing "a kind of black face of the DLC [Democratic Leadership Council]." That interview, in turn, has prompted this rejoinder in The Nation, with Melissa Harris-Perry coming to Obama's defense.

Much of this dispute is conducted in personalized, indeed psychologized terms. That is more or less wholly unhelpful. And all of the participants have substantial egos. That does not help either. But both of those things are, in my estimation, totally beside the point. It seems to me that on matters of substance West's criticisms of Obama's politics and policies are more or less right on point. Moreover, I think it is healthy to have critical debate in a party seemingly intent on running to the middle on virtually every issue. Because in that direction there is no help for those, regardless of color, who constitute the middle and working classes or the poor in the United States. And while Dr. West speaks in a colorful way that is not to everyone's liking, he regularly speaks up for those from whom the Democrats are turning away.

Dreams and Delusions

If there were any doubt prior to his State of the Union Address, there can be no longer any uncertainty. Thanks, Mr. Fish! Obama crowed about the resurgent Wall Street crowd and about corporate profits. But you might have noticed that he forgot to mention unemployment or the poor. There is no reason to assume that innovation (Obama's hope for economic recovery) and so forth contribute to job creation or improving wages unless the rapacious capitalists are held in check - after all jobs have evaporated and wages tanked over the past decades of steady improvements in productivity.

This evening as I drove in top swim some laps and go to the grocery store, I heard the new Tavis Smiley & Cornel West tag team on the local public radio station. (I must say that I really am shocked that our own WXXI, the world's most boring npr station, carries the show.) I was impressed with the direct criticism that West leveled at Obama. The criticism is well deserved. My only doubt is that Obama ever was anything other than a centrist. In any case, Having heard this one episode of the Smiley-West show, I may be shamed into being more thoroughly sympathetic to Dr. West than I have been here in the past.

Fairey Heads West

Somehow my Google alerts captured a blog post by (I think - at least he signs the statement) the wholly unimpressive Shepard Fairey. Turns out that he has generated this poster of Cornel West. (I reprint it under the 'fair use' regs ...). Now, Fairey himself is a bit of a buffoon. (I am not overwhelmed by Fairey's 'art,' although I don't find it offensive. I do find offensive his muddying the legal waters surrounding the matter of fair use with his shenanigans last year.) I don't want to hold that, however, against Dr. West, whom I think is very smart, very articulate, but to my mind not always sufficiently judicious regarding the tasks to which he lends those talents. Who am I to say? After all, Dr. West is a very busy man. For some reasons behind my ambivalence I recommend a pair of year old columns - one, two - by Scott McLemee.