Wednesday, November 2, 2011

A Perpetual Line Stepper: Cornel West Wants to Go Upside Ron Christie's Head on Real Time with Bill Maher



Someone suggested that I sound like Ron Christie. I don't hear the resemblance as I am much more chocolaty and sensual, a mass of impenetrable negritude that calls women to me like a black hole in outer space beckons passing starships.

If "their" blacks are indeed better than "our" blacks, Ron Christie's appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher does not do their team much credit at all. I am all for ideological diversity, but I have to wonder at what point does personal integrity--or even intellectual honesty--become a variable and decision rule for talking head conservatives. Christie consistently talks out of both sides of mouth; this interview is no different, as he spins and offers nonsense talk in an effort to undermine President Barack Obama.

The Maher interview is also a great example of how punditry is a performance, especially in this example where Christie and West are both channeling their own respective types of negritude.

Cornel is the afrodemic superstar philosopher cut from the cloth of DuBois, who appears in movies, and produces unnecessarily dense prose in an effortlessly magical act of intellectual and philosophical creation. Christie is the approved and safe negro who is non-threatening, and operates from the head, and certainly not the heart (or the loins). He is passionless. In all, Ron Christie's blackness is his own interpretation and performance of Whiteness.

West is certainly clowning during this interview when he feigns wanting to knock Christie upside his head for being a perpetual line stepper. But, who do you think would win in a fight? Christie seems very traditional to me, the type to operate under the Queen's rules like a late 19th century era pugilist. West, an emcee and street intellectual, could get a little gangsta and gully if he so chose. Christie has youth; West has age and wisdom.

Who wins?


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

**comes in to stroke CD's ego** CD, you definitely have more swag than ron christie; you have nothing to worry about.

I saw this live and was lmao at Dr West! The doc handed it to him.

MB

CNu said...

ahem.., CDV - methinkst the lady protests too loudly...,

It would've been funny as hail to see these two little bony middle-aged gnerds go toe-to-toe - windmilling on each other like a couple of little girls gone wild.

CNu said...

Cornel is the afrodemic superstar philosopher cut from the cloth of DuBois, who appears in movies, and produces unnecessarily dense prose in an effortlessly magical act of intellectual and philosophical creation.

uh.., no, not really, Cornel about a mile wide and a millimeter deep - and that sir (if he's the best you've got) - is the fundamental failing of the afrodemic enterprise writ large.

chaunceydevega said...

@Cnu. I agree. Which is why I goofed on him. His earlier work is much better, now he is driving the benz and doing his thing and playing the role of academic superstar for the masses.

There are other folks who are not as verbally gifted and charismatic who are doing some good things under the radar.

Comrade PhysioProf said...

Dunno much about West, but listening to Christie in that clip it is clear that he is nothing but a slimy lying shill for the republican party. The truth obviously means nothing to that motherfucker, and his every word is chosen to push buttons in the depths of the right-wing lizard brain: "citizen", "patriotic", "9/11", "our troops", "harm's way", "overseas", "Constitution", "Saddam Hussein", "the American people", etc. The whole point of his shtick is to repeat those words as many times as possible, and thereby paint his political opponents as the Other, and not as genuine Americans.

Sadly, the right-wing is extremely effective at using this kind of rhetoric to further their political goals, while the left generally sucks shit at it, and instead rely on attempting to use logic, facts, and argument to establish the truth of propositions. The right understands that propositional argument is nothing but a vehicle.

When right-wingers watch that clip, what they are left with is the strong feeling that West, Maher, and the other people arguing with Christie are un-American subversives who want to harm Real America.