Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Cornel West on Obama

(via Al Jazeera) See here. What he has to say about Libya in particular is quite good.

3 comments:

JM said...

There's been recent issue around how Jazeera's been scaling back their coverage of Palestine:
http://www.maxajl.com/?p=5094
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/search?q=Jazeera

davidly said...

Good segment. My point of departure would be his assessment of Bo Rama as weak or spineless. And when you combine that with his calling him a Clintonite, it's hard to believe that he is actually giving him the benefit of the doubt, as far as the "why is he this way" is concerned.

I guess I'll pull a West myself and give Cornell West the benefit of the doubt - that he doesn't really believe that the president gives a crap.

Anonymous said...

I don't know if I agree about the spineless comment. Obama has shown quite a bit of spine escalating the war in Afghanistan (and starting new ones elsewhere), handing big tax breaks to the rich, freezing federal workers wages, etc. etc.

Let's be clear: he's doing a reasonably good job from a ruling class perspective. If I were them, I wouldn't be so quick to conclude that he doesn't have a backbone.

It's not a question of backbone tout court- it's a question of WHO Obama represents, and WHO he is willing to fight for. It's clear, as West argues in the video, that he doesn't represent poor and working-class people whatsoever. This isn't a matter of lacking backbone, but of simply being on the wrong side of the class war.