Why I’m Defending Cornel And Tavis Today

One of the things that drives me up the wall about ultraconservative ideologues is how they can look you dead in the eye and spew hordes of total nonsense, inaccuracies, and flat out lies, then look at you like you’re the one that’s crazy.


[Beneath The Spin]

Okay, so maybe Hell can freeze over, because if
someone had told me yesterday that I’d be sitting here defending Tavis
Smiley and Cornel West today I would have assured them that such an
occurrence would only take place the day after Adolph could go
snowboarding through the pits of Hell.

But one must learn to
prioritize one’s demons. While Tavis and West constitute a bitter threat
to the poor, middle class, and Black communities in their effort to
enrich themselves through yet another tour featuring self-service,
demagoguery, and disinformation, it seems that The Washington Examiner
has found themselves another grinnin’ young deludetant in the person of
Ms. Star Parker.

In her article, “How to Keep the Poor Poor,”
she says, “Media personality Tavis Smiley and Princeton philosophy
professor Cornel West have just published their latest contribution to
American poverty propaganda, ‘The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty
Manifesto’ . . . To the extent this book is taken seriously by anyone,
the result will only be more entrenched poverty.”

While I make
it a point to never go anywhere near any of Tavis and West’s personal
enrichment pamphlets, if they’ve remained true to form, I find no reason
to doubt any part of what Ms. Parker has said above. But then she goes
on.

“Smiley and West’s message is simple. America today
consists of a few powerful, rapacious rich people and a lot of
unfortunate, exploited poor people. The rich are rich because they are
lucky. The poor are poor because they are unlucky. And the only way to
solve the problem is for an activist government to manage the economy
and redistribute wealth.”

That’s where the red flag went up.
Even though I consider these two hustlers the quintessential demagogues,
unless they’ve made a radical change in their bamboozlery, they never
say that the rich are rich because they’re lucky and the poor or poor
because they’re unlucky. In order for their flimflam to capture the
imagination they have to be accurate in their premise – many of the rich
are rich due to corruption, and many of the poor are poor due to social
manipulation. 

You see, Tavis and West understands that it’s
very important that they maintain accuracy and not overgeneralize during
the setup, so when they drop their false resolution on you they’ll seem
like reasonable men, and not clumsy and transparently idiotic like Ms.
Parker does when she voices her corrupted version of their corruption of
reality.

Ms. Parker’s spin on the Tavis/West resolution is,
“the only way to solve the problem is for an activist government to
manage the economy and redistribute wealth.” We know that’s a lie
because liberals don’t talk that way. The entire sentence is nothing
more than a string of conservative talking points tied together – that
is, “activist government,” “manage the economy,” “redistribute wealth.”
Liberals have more finesse – even duplicitous liberals. That kind of
gross inarticulation has the print of conservative clodhoppers all over
it. So we know they didn’t say that, or even allude to it. 
 
Tavis
and West would say something more like, the majority of the rich
–except for ourselves, of course– got that way through corruption and
social manipulation, and the poor are poor because Barack Obama –that
jive, Johnnie-come-lately sucka who butted before us in line and won’t
invite us to the White House or return our phone calls– won’t do nothing
to help you – But we love him though. Then they’ll proceed to tell us
everything that’s wrong with the country –primarily, Obama– then fail
to tell us what’s wrong with us, or them.

Then Ms. Parker went on to criticize Tavis and West for saying, “The 150 million Americans in
or near poverty are there as result of unemployment, war, the Great
Recession, corporate greed, and income inequality.”

What, is she denying
that? That’s one of the few things they’re saying that’s true.

One
of the things that drives me up the wall about ultraconservative
ideologues is how they can look you dead in the eye and spew hordes of
total nonsense, inaccuracies, and flat out lies, then look at you like
you’re the one that’s crazy. How can anyone with a brain say that we’ve
got to keep the rich on national welfare because they’re the one’s who
are creating the jobs? Can’t they see that the only way that people are
going to be hired to make tennis shoes is if the poor and middle class
have the money to buy them? No one is going to hire anyone to make
tennis shoes that they can’t sell. So it’s the poor and middle class who
create jobs. 
 
So while Tavis and West might be greedy and
self-serving bogeymen, the Republican Party is the Devil, and if Ms.
Parker can’t see that, she’s a fool.  
 
For more articles by columnist Eric L. Wattree please see www.wattree.blogspot.com Reach him via [email protected]

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