Playthell G. Benjamin was a young brilliant professor at U
Mass in 1971. He was the most intellectual and
articulate member of the
African American Studies
Department and these facts
alone gave rise to
intra-racial jealousy and
subterfuge. He left U Mass
in 1972.
Every word that he has
written in this response to
Cornell West's Op Ed piece
in the NYT is accurate,
timely, and poignantly
analytical. Thanks for
sharing this masterpiece
with me. I shall
forward it to several other
people whom I know will be
encouraged after reading it. POISONOUS WORDS Playthell G. Benjamin wrote the following letter in response to Cornell West's article in the NY Times:
[August 25, 2011] The age of Obama has fallen
tragically short of
fulfilling King’s
prophetic legacy. Instead of
articulating a radical
democratic vision and
fighting for homeowners,
workers and poor people in
the form of mortgage relief,
jobs and investment in
education, infrastructure
and housing, the
administration gave us
bailouts for banks, record
profits for Wall Street and
giant budget cuts on the
backs of the vulnerable.
An Open Letter to Dr. Cornell West
Pundit, Poet and Philosopher Share a Bright Moment Dear Cornell,
After reading your Op-Ed
column on Dr. Martin Luther
King in the New York Times,
I felt compelled to sit down
and write you a letter.
Since the conversation that
I want to have with you is
about public matters i.e.
the fate of our nation and
the Presidency of Barack
Obama, I decided to make it
an open letter and put it on
the internet so everyone can
see it. I feel it is my duty
to respond to your column
because you are such an
influential public
intellectual and moral scold
people listen when you
speak. Like E. F. Hutton on
finance, you da man with
many people on matters of
morality and politics. Since
I have publicly pledged to
praise saints, celebrate
heroes, unmask charlatans
and chastise scoundrels I
could not remain silent. You
have all the trappings of
intellectual and moral
authority – Harvard education,
PhD, author of influential
texts, able orator, Princeton Professor
of Religion – but the more
I watch what you are doing
with these powerful
assets…I fear you are
squandering them my brother,
and you are in danger of
hurting us all with your
folly.
I
am employing the term folly in the same sense as
the two time Pulitzer Prize winning historian
Barbara Tuchman in her path breaking book “The
March of Folly.” Here the term folly refers to
the decisions people make – - usually leaders
of nation states – that all observable
evidence suggests is against their own
interests. And there can be no doubt among
partisans of the working classes and foes of the
plutocrats, which you claim to be, that the Tea
Party /Republicans are avowed enemies of our
agenda. Yet you are at this very moment engaging
in activities that if continued will aid a total
takeover of our national government by these
vicious enemies of the working class.
Thus
I have no doubt that in the present struggle for
the soul of our nation and the survival of
organized labor – which is the vehicle through
which the working class defends their gains and
advance their interests – you are missing your
true calling in this great fight. As a
self-declared spokesman for the working class
and the poor, the proletariat and lumpen-proletariat,
you are curiously at odds with the actual
spokesman for the working class, the elected
leaders of the great unions, who correctly view
President Obama as the only friend of poor and
working class Americans among all the people who
are likely to become the next President of the USA!
Even
as I write the Teamster Union President Jim
Hoffa is on WNBC TV reaffirming their support
for the reelection of the President; although
they have some sharp disagreements with him
about strategy. They do not question that Barack
is their friend and the Republicans are the
enemy; and if empowered would callously take
away rights that the working class struggled for
a century to win. The contrast between what the
leader of one of the world’s most powerful
unions had to say on this matter, and what you
have been saying, highlights the fundamental
disagreement that I have with you about your
criticism of the President.
Dr.
Nathan Hare – who holds two PhD’s, one in
sociology and one in Psychology – is a
longtime intellectual warrior in our struggle, a
man who was on the front lines of engaged
scholars when you were running about in knee
pants in the wilderness of Sacramento
chasing
fire flies, states the problem succinctly. In a
recent statement on Facebook, Dr. Hare argued
that black critics of President Obama must first
make it clear that there is no alternative to
supporting the President and the Democratic
Party in the coming elections. That is the only
way your criticism can be constructive rather
than destructive Cornell.
The
difference is clear: constructive criticism is a
critique that will help us defeat the Grand
Obstructionist Party in the coming elections.
Destructive criticism is the kind of loose and
mindless diatribes that confuses and demoralizes
people to the point where they decide that they
cannot vote for either party and stay
home…effectively turning the national
government over to the Republicans. I am afraid,
Dr. West, that this will be the result of your
misguided, overly-emotional and often irrational
attacks on the President. Alas, I am
increasingly hearing threats to remain at home
on election from your acolytes.
Unlike
you, the Teamster leader made it clear that
there was no chance that organized labor was
going to abandon the President because the
Republicans are the enemy of the working class.
While he didn’t like it, he understood the
compromises the President has made. They get it
that the President was forced into certain
compromises in order to get anything done and
avoid disaster. But you, Dr. West, don’t get
it! You talk in terms that suggest the President
has betrayed the entire progressive legacy
because he was forced to compromise!
When
in fact, the very concept of compromise means
that you have to accept something you don’t
want in order to get something you want. Whereas
the Teamster leader was clear in his purpose and
what must be done, you prattled on in your NY
Times Op-Ed in such a muddled fashion one could
easily conclude that you think President Obama
could have solved the problems you rightly
highlight but just wouldn’t do it!!! And
therefore deserves defeat in 2012 – which goes
without saying if your first charge is true! If
you are not saying this, then what the fuck are
you talking about?
What
for instance do you mean by the following
passage? “The age of Obama has fallen
tragically short of fulfilling King’s
prophetic legacy. Instead of articulating a
radical democratic vision and fighting for
homeowners, workers and poor people in the form
of mortgage relief, jobs and investment in
education, infrastructure and housing, the
administration gave us bailouts for banks,
record profits for Wall
Street and
giant budget cuts on the backs of the
vulnerable.” Considering that on two thirds of
the issues you mention here the President
actually proposed policies to do just what you
said he should; I am constantly amazed at how
people print stuff like this from you and
don’t seem to recognize that it is muddled
non-sense!
The
only other person who manages to get away with
publishing incoherent gibberish on a regular
basis is Stanley Crouch, but at least he has the
refuge of poetic license and people are so
hypnotized by his use of language they don’t
notice that he is making no sense. Your argument
is the kind of stuff one expects from an
impassioned but not very well educated
undergraduate student…someone who has listened
in on the conversations of mature intellectuals
and got bits and pieces of the conversation and
is now trying to reconstruct it –but doing so
badly!
It is embarrassing to hear someone who is widely
regarded as one of the nation’s premiere
intellectuals say things like: “The
administration gave us bailouts for banks,
record profits for Wall Street and giant budget
cuts on the backs of the vulnerable.” First of
all the bank bailout or TARP was passed during
the last days of the Bush Administration, and
was an admission that their economic policies
had failed. Thus the task of any serious analyst
of our present economic mess is to point out
with clarity that the Republicans now running
the House, and all of their presidential
candidates, are advocating those same policies
– only now they are on steroids! Your failure
to address this issue is itself enough to
disqualify you as someone we need take
seriously.
The
problem with the kind of editorial you have
written for the Times is that you are not
required to suggest any policy options or
strategies for achieving them. It does not take
much to demonstrate that your argument is
morally pretentious empty rhetoric, a hysterical
rant that leads nowhere. Do you really think
this nation, and the black community especially,
would be better off if the banking system had
failed…if the president had stood back and
allowed the world financial system to collapse?
If you do you are the most highly educated moron
in history, a worthy ally of the Tea Party! If
you don’t believe it you are a dangerous
charlatan and hypocrite and therefore of one
heart with the so-called “Tea Party
Patriots.”
Instead
of pointing out that President Obama has passed
the most stringent regulations on Wall Street
since the 1930’s, and nominated Elizabeth
Warren, the brilliant Harvard Law
professor and longtime advocate for the poor, to
head the new agency, you attack him for saving
the world financial system from collapse!
Instead of denouncing the Republicans for
refusing to confirm Professor Warren and
fund the agency tasked with implementing the new
financial regulations, while opposing any
attempt to tax the rich, who are sitting on
record profits, you attack the president for the
success of the business community which is the
engine that propels this economy.
Rising
profits in the corporate sector is proof that
the President’s policies to save the economy
from a great depression that many economists
believe would have been worse than the 1930’s
has succeeded! That’s how capitalism works
Cornell! And, in spite of the fact that both of
us wish it were otherwise, Americans
overwhelmingly support capitalism! If the
democrats were in control of the Congress
however, they would have done away with the Bush
Tax cuts and raised the effective corporate tax
rate by terminating many of the tax write offs
that they presently enjoy. It is the Republicans
that are preventing this from happening…but
you continue to blame the President. Your
actions in this regard is leading some of your
critics to conclude that you are really a paid
agent for the plutocrats – especially since
your so-called “Poverty Tour” designed to
embarrass the President is paid for by a major
commercial bank! – a false witness with a
hidden agenda designed to so confuse the issues
that many who voted for President Obama in the
last election will stay at home this time and
give the election to the Republicans.
That’s
what some folks are beginning to say about you Corny. However I am
not one of them. In my view it doesn’t matter if you are a paid
agent of the right or not, because I can’t imagine what you
would do differently if you were a paid agent. As the New York
Times columnists Charles Blow has demonstrated by crunching the
numbers: If everybody who voted for the President votes for him in
the coming election, but 10% of Afro-Americans who voted stay at
home, Barack will lose! Hence whether you were paid for your role
in this or not is a distinction without a difference. The result
will be an unmitigated disaster for the least among us…the
people you claim to care about the most.
While
your Op-Ed is full of hysterical moral preachment and pretentious
sophistry masquerading as deep thought, with false analogies
popping up everywhere like Banquo’s ghost, you never rise to
what I believe is your true calling in the great struggle to
determine whether civilization or savagery shall triumph in
America. Sometimes you tease us with the possibility that you
recognize your role, but you never rise to the occasion. A
poignant case in point is the following observation: “King’s
response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A
revolution in our priorities, a re-evaluation of our values, a
reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation
of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of
power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and
ordinary citizens.” Obviously this transformation is a matter
that is far beyond the control of any politician; this is work for
preachers, philosophers and theologians.
If you had been unable to recognize it before, the implications of
your observations in the Op-Ed should have clearly defined your
calling. You are a professor of religion at Princeton,
a position which invests you with great authority on the
interpretation of biblical texts. Hence instead of dispensing bad
political advice and spouting questionable historical analysis,
what we desperately need you to do is lead an assault on the
theology that fuels so many of the arguments of the far right. How
is it possible that you can stand silently by and bear witness to
far right evangelists preaching a false doctrine that converts
Jesus Christ from the champion of the poor and down trodden, into
the God of billionaires that grind the poor underfoot to make the
rich richer?
How have you chosen to attack President Obama instead of Rick
Perry,
an unabashed foe of the working class who literally wraps himself
in the bible, that is leading all Republican candidates in the
polls, when Barack is the only friend of the poor who has a chance
of being elected to the Oval Office? Why are you not running
around like a watchman in the night yelling “Blasphemy!” “Sacrilege!”
to the top of your lungs? Was it not Jesus who said: “It is
easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a
rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven?” Did not Jesus Christ
despise usurious bankers so much that he drove the money lenders
from the temple with violent action? If I, a man whose devoutly
Christian senior daughter has declared “an un-churched
heathen,” is offended by this perversion of the teachings of
Jesus why aren’t you? If their false theology offends a wretch
like me – an avowed atheist beyond salvation – why are you so
nonchalant Chilly Willie? You who claim to love the lord every
chance you get ! I have wracked my brain seeking an answer to this
enigma.
If you are not the stealth provocateur out to do the president in for
money or personal animosities fueled by envy, revenge or blind
ambition, then you have misread your role and tragically
squandered your splendid gifts worse than anyone I can think of
now or in the distant past. Ten years ago you ran around the
country urging people to vote for consumer advocate and political
gadfly Ralph Nader rather than Al Gore, the Democratic candidate.
And in doing so you helped to elect George W. Bush; if the 300,000
wayward Democrats had not voted for Nader in
Florida, Al Gore’s margin of victory would have been so large that the
controversy which put Bush in office would never have been an
issue. Not only are you far too arrogant and self-righteous to
fess up your role in this disaster, and seek forgiveness from the
multitude of Americans who were injured or killed by Bush’s
decisions on the economy, taxes, war and peace: You are doing it
again!!!!!
It seems that you never learn, or you refuse to learn, but I warned
you that your misguided preachment could result in the election of
George Bush and it did. In fact, I published a commentary of
several thousand words laying out the dimensions of the impending
disaster titled “On Choosing the Lesser Evil”
and I have
posted it on this blog to remind people of the destructive role
you played 10 years ago. It is inconceivable that you learned
nothing from that experience; but alas, either you learned nothing
or you are clear in your purpose to destroy the Presidency of
President Obama no matter what. That would make you a helpful ally
of the Tea Party if not an agent. Should these right wing anti-
government zealots achieve total control of the U.S. Government; the sins that they commit against working people of
all colors will also leave an indelible stain on your character.
It would be poetic justice worthy of a Shakespearian tragedy to
watch you wander about like Lady Macbeth crying “Out damned
spot!’ in a futile attempt to white-wash your role as midwife to
the calamity.
Playthell
G. Benjamin
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