Dr. Cornel West, Tavis Smiley Blast President Obama
Just a week into his reelection, President Obama is receiving harsh words from two of his most vocal Black critics. Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are back at it and recently criticized the commander-in-chief for his expensive reelection campaign considering the number of Americans living in poverty. The two collaborators on the book “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto” didn’t mince their words in the slightest and recently summed up their opinions on the President of the United States this way to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now; “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,” said Dr. West. “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.”
“This was a campaign for the White House of extremes, a campaign of extremes. Too much money, as Dr. West already said—morally profane that we’d spend $6 billion, so too much money,” said Smiley. “Too much time. I think, you know, we’ve got to get to a point of rethinking how we do presidential politics in this country, from the Electoral College to the money, to the debates, but too much time is spent on the campaign. It used to be that the campaigning would stop and the governing would start. Now there’s no line between the two.”
The words from the two black leaders who consider them advocates for the overlooked poor are the latest example of Smiley and West’ seemingly nonstop grievances with the 45th President. And while they may be genuinely concerned, Obama supporters are beginning to wonder if there words are not carefully calculated stunts to drum up drama—and sales for their tome. “Filed under ‘dude get a life!”, wrote a highly sourced President supporter on Twitter about the issue. “Dear Cornel West, though I respect your intellectual prowess, calling Obama a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface” is downright crass,” added another.
What do you think about Dr. West and Tavis Smiley’s criticisms? Spot on or too extreme? -danielle canada
