The black corporate puppet and the angry kettle

Princeton University’s Cornel West is complaining bitterly about Barack Obama (whom he once supported):

Cornel West, a Princeton University professor and leading black intellectual, is harshly criticizing President Obama, a candidate he once supported but now calls “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.”

West apparently believes that the president fears “free” black men because he fears his own cultural whiteness:

“I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men,” West said. “It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white…When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening.”

That’s essentially the “he’s not black enough” argument which was raised well before Obama had cinched the nomination. What I’d really like to ask Professor West is whether he would consider Herman Cain to be a “free black man” of the sort he claims the president lives in fear. I don’t think he would answer, though, for I am sure he would condemn Cain as just another  “black puppet of corporate plutocrats.” And after all, Cain’s background does include being a corporate CEO, and according to the Ron Paul campaign, Cain is a “former Chairman and Member of the Board of Directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.”

But wait! West is a professor at Princeton University, is he not? (The “Class of 1943 University Professor of Religion,” to be exact.)

So I found myself wondering whether he might be working for corporate plutocrats, so I looked and sure enough, a cursory look at Princeton’s current Board of Trustees reveals that Professor West is owned and controlled by a number of corporate plutocrats, including the Chairman, Investment Banking Division, Goldman, Sachs & Co,  the Managing Partner, 5AM Ventures, the Senior VP, Time Warner Inc., the Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer, J.P. Morgan Chase Treasury and Securities Services, the Chairman, Investment Banking, Credit Suisse Securities LLC, a Senior Advisor, Morgan Stanley, the Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., the President, Turner Broadcasting System International, Inc., the Managing Member, Rockpoint Group, LLC, the Senior Managing Director, Citadel Investment Group.

How “free” does that make him?

And if you think West’s indictment is bad, actor Peter Fonda is calling the president a traitor:

Fonda — a keen environmentalist and co-producer of the film which centres on the explosion of the BP oil rig Deepwater Horizon, the ensuing spill and its consequences — accused Washington of trying to gag reporting on the issue.

“I sent an email to President Obama saying, ‘You are a f(expletive) traitor,’ using those words… ‘You’re a traitor, you allowed foreign boots on our soil telling our military — in this case the coastguard — what they can and could not do, and telling us, the citizens of the United States, what we could or could not do’.”

Fonda, who said he sent the email last week, appears in “The Big Fix” trying to get on to Louisiana beaches to assess the impact of the biggest oil spill in US history, only to be turned away by BP clean-up personnel.

He may have a point that it was inappropriate to let BP corporate stooges tell Americans what to do, but that is not treason according to the Constitution. At least, I don’t think we are still at war with England.

Wow, I guess I just inadvertently defended a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. Maybe even two or three of them.

I’m sorry, but this is not my job!