OK, so what is -really- important to Cornel West?

[Catherina]

49. "...the fierce urgency of now" was totally tossed

I like your posts, whoever you are, you're rocking.

There isn't a word out of Brother West's mouth that I've disagreed with. Ever. Not as far as I know but then again, I was one of Jeremiah Wright's fiercest defenders, and Obama's too when the dirty 2007 racist games to exploit, divide and conquer really took off.

From the NYT, 2007

...

Obama came to the Apollo Theater in Harlem Thursday night — down the block from Bill Clinton’s office — to try to wrest some support back from the first black president and his wife. Some young Obama fans wore yellow tees reading, “Who decided Hillary is best for the black community?”

Charlie Rangel; John Lewis; Quincy Jones; Essence Communications’ chairman, Edward Lewis; and other celebrated Hillary supporters were not there.

But Obama did get to sup at Sylvia’s soul-food restaurant — the place where Bill O’Reilly was shocked to find such genteel black folk — with the still-up-for-grabs Al Sharpton. The only endorsement Sharpton offered afterward was: “A man that likes chicken and corn bread can’t be that bad.”

...

And he got a benediction from Cornel West, the Princeton professor who took Obama to task earlier this year for not attending a national gathering of black scholars and civil rights leaders.

West tried to help Obama in his uneasy quest to claim his place in the black community, calling him “my brother,” “an eloquent brother,” “a good brother” and “a decent brother.” He urged the audience to put Obama in a historical continuum with the spirituals on the plantation and Apollo stars like James Brown and Billie Holiday. Black, he said, has variations. “We don’t expect Alicia Keys to be Aretha,” he said.

Obama threw in some lines meant to show his black fire, even if it’s a cool fire.

...

He said he’s running because of what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the fierce urgency of now.” Now can the prodigy muster that fierce urgency?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/opinion/02dowd.html?_r=0

The answer years later is obviously NO. Even before the inauguration, we'd gone from the fierce urgency of now to the fierce urgency of betraying people with his FISA vote, Rahm Emmanuel, Eric Holder, Timothy Geithner etc.