Not sure who I hate more, West or Obama. Crouch is ok with me though. For a liberal, he is actually intelligent and fair for the most part.
Cornel West is an expert showman but nothing more: The lead huckster of the Ivy League's takedown
STANLEY CROUCH
Cornel West, the Princeton professor of African-American studies who recently made some crude statements about President Obama, has never been much more than a six-figure entertainer, ready to bite the hand that pays him even while reaching for his check. He has never seen a microphone or television camera that he did not like.
Publicity, not scholarship, is his true tradition. West often gives his listeners no more than sound and fury, signifying nothing. And he is very good at appearing overcome by his passionate convictions.
This man would prefer to have himself seen as a "revolutionary" - one whose pay level is commensurate with his importance.
Everyone in academic show business knows that West can fill lecture halls with students roused by his performances. What they actually learn is up for grabs, but they do have a good time. That has resulted in his being the most famous and economically envied of the black public intellectuals.
The game is now getting old. The last straw may have come when West told the website Truthdig, "My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men ... As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white .... He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination."
How now, brown cow?
It fell to Melissa Harris-Perry, who has been a colleague of West's at Princeton as well as a columnist for The Nation, to take him down on MSNBC last week by rebutting his comments and saying that they "smacked of birtherism." Black-themed websites were abuzz with Harris-Perry's cool dismissal of the huckster.
Many were surprised she had the guts to speak so bluntly, probably because black academics are as cowardly as their white counterparts. One should thus not be surprised that they tend to steer clear of commenting on anything that West says, however removed from reality it may be.
Serious black intellectuals privately dismissed West many years ago as no more than an academic loudmouth with a good show business game. He has perfected a variety of poses - from academic to conciliator to rapper - that are intended to give the impression that a very substantial mind is mulling over something and will soon drop some rhetorical bombs that will blow away all nonsense.
The effect is usually the opposite: West is best at going beyond sentimentality to pure bathos. His answer to a teaspoon of unnecessary sugar is a barrel of syrup. His most faithful audience is made up of liberal white cornballs and the black cornballs who mirror them.
Harris-Perry is not one of them. Her own television appearances contain answers to questions about race and ethnicity that are well thought-out and articulated in a communicative speaking style. Whether or not one agrees with her, she is clearly not just another academic lightweight hustling for speaking engagements.
Harris-Perry, who is moving from Princeton to Tulane, has for the left the kind of integrity that Peggy Noonan and David Frum use to balance Republican entertainers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. As her takedown of West on air and in The Nation proves, Harris-Perry understands that the conversation is actually about politics, not about the bruised egos and delusional babblings of college professors.
A staple figure in American comedy is the pompous, educated fool, drowning in narcissism. West has long fit the bill; Harris-Perry finally exposed him for those who didn't already know.
crouch.stanley@gmail.com
Stanley Crouch's column appears in the Daily News every Monday. Stanley, who has written for the paper since 1995, has received many awards for his writing, including a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. His books have been widely praised and he was recently inducted into the Academy of Arts and Sciences.?/a>?
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