All Cornel West, All the Time: Slate Begins a "West Whine Watch"

A reader who I don't think shares my respect for Cornel West (but likes my blog anyway) alerted me this morning to Slate.com's newest regular feature, the Cornel West Whine Watch. Now, West's likening Larry Summers to Ariel Sharon in an NPR interview yesterday was a mite excessive, but his general characterization of Summers as a "bull in a china shop" is more than justified. And for Slate to dimiss West's anger as "whining" is a typical tactic employed against people of color, women, and other "minorities": were he a conservative white professor disrespected by a liberal president, all the pundits at Fox News would be spinning his comments as righteous fury at unfair victimization (see my old but still all-too-true cartoon The Right-Wing Rhetoric Zone). But because he is a black man, they spin his anger as whining/complaining/excessive emotion.

Look for my new cartoon on the subject (of Summers and West, not whining) next Wednesday.