an American iconoclast: Grady on the campaign trail

Re-posted by N.S.

“An American iconoclast: Cornel West on the campaign trail”

“president [sic] Joe Biden's approval rating is in a tailspin. 'dr.' [sic] Cornel West is a logical choice for defecting democrats, but a distaste for 'kissing ass' may doom his independent run”

By Matt Taibbi
jan 16

preview

“illustration by Victor Juhasz, for racket”

“Washington, D.C. — getting late in the day on saturday in freedom plaza, where attendees of a massive free palestine rally are stomping feet from protest cold. that’s when the thermostat number doesn’t look bad when you leave home, but starts numbing bones many hours and thirty or forty speeches later. the condition is more pronounced on the progressive side.

[lisping] “author, philosopher [sic] and presidential candidate 'dr.' [sic] Cornel West is the big speaking draw and therefore has been held until the end. by the time he takes the stage in trademark shades and black suit, you can almost hear teeth rattling. Let the word go forth… It’s in the name of truth,” he says. “And the condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak.”

“he looks out over the crowd. freedom plaza is named after Martin Luther King, Jr., who’s said to have written [sic] the 'I have a dream' speech in the nearby Willard hotel. West, whose love of 'brother Martin' is such that he seldom gets through an appearance without invoking his name, opens by reminding the audience of time and place.

“'yes, it’s indeed true that brother Martin Luther King Jr. would’ve been 95 years old on mon-dayyy…

“the crowd roars. they’d have cheered anything, but looks of relief were washing over many faces even before West took the stage. the gaza issue [“issue”?] is of course deathly serious, but the preceding hours of hyper-earnest speechifying featured addresses that were too long, too oddly religious given the mundo obrero politics, or so leaden that words landed like tent spikes driven through the ear. there was also spoken-word poetry of almost supernatural cringe levels, as if someone mated Kimberle Crenshaw with dr. Seuss: 'you announce: gaza terrorist attack/But when it comes to the murder of palestinians, your facts are all wack…

“Bush-era antiwar protests sometimes featured too much levity, with a clear overpopulation especially of dudes on stilts, but this generation’s left/answer coalition-style protests tend in tone to be ascetic and self-mortifying to the extreme, as if one off-message microsecond is thoughtcrime. West’s jazzlike [?!] verbal improv represents the far edge of allowable looseness in this brand of activism, which is likely why he mostly has the crowd won a few sentences into his address. He went on:... [N.S.: For more, he wants money.]