I mean this man can’t get a break of any sort. Everyone is happy that Romney isn’t our president, however they are still pissed that Obama is. Make up your minds. The next person to fall in on the “Bash Obama Band-Wagon” is Dr. Cornel West. In an interview with Amy Goodman, on “Democracy Now”, Dr. West mentions how the presidential candidates should be ashamed of how much money they spend on their electoral campaigns. President Obama, is a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface,” stated Dr. West. Obama wasn’t the only one being talked about. Rev. Al Sharpton, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson and Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry rolled off the nationally known speakers tongue as well. “We’re living in a society where everybody is up for sale. Everything is up for sale. And he and Brother Sharpton and Sister Melissa and others, they have sold their souls for a mess of Obama pottage.” Come on people, we could be in worse hands.
I think that it’s morally obscene and spiritually profane to spend $6 billion on an election, $2 billion on a presidential election, and not have any serious discussion—poverty, trade unions being pushed against the wall dealing with stagnating and declining wages when profits are still up and the 1 percent are doing very well, no talk about drones dropping bombs on innocent people. So we end up with such a narrow, truncated political discourse, as the major problems—ecological catastrophe, climate change, global warming. So it’s very sad. I mean, I’m glad there was not a right-wing takeover, but we end up with a Republican, a Rockefeller Republican in blackface, with Barack Obama, so that our struggle with regard to poverty intensifies.
But that’s not all.
He had some choice words for Rev. Al Sharpton, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson and Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry, as well. While the aforementioned scholars have been extremely vocal in their support of the Obama Administration, Tavis Smiley, who was interviewed along with Dr. West, said their support comes at the expense of critical thinking and a legitimate push for a Black agenda:
“…Lincoln isn’t Lincoln if Frederick Douglass isn’t pushing him. FDR isn’t FDR if A. Philip Randolph and Eleanor Roosevelt aren’t pushing him. LBJ isn’t LBJ if MLK isn’t pushing him.
“We don’t believe in making excuses. We believe that if [Obama] is not pushed, he’s going to be a transactional president and not a transformational president. And we believe that the time is now for action and no longer accommodation. But that doesn’t happen unless you’re pushed.”
Dr. West said that Smiley was just being “very kind,” and gave his opinion to Goodman, straight no chaser:
I love Brother Mike Dyson… but we’re living in a society where everybody is up for sale. Everything is up for sale. And he and Brother Sharpton and Sister Melissa and others, they have sold their souls for a mess of Obama pottage. And we invite them back to the black prophetic tradition after Obama leaves. But at the moment, they want insider access, and they want to tell those kind of lies. They want to turn their back to poor and working people.
Responding to Dyson’s statement that President Obama was “progressive,” Both Smiley and West said that President Obama is not, because to be progressive means taking risks, something that the president has not done.
