Like most black people I used to like both Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, but after they made public fools of themselves on the very day that Barack Obama announced his intention to run for president, I started researching them. And during that research I found that their images were merely facades that hid highly ambitious, self-serving, and untrustworthy clowns of the worst kind, and this is not merely my opinion. The most cursory review of the facts will easily bear this out.
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Tavis is the most prolific corporate shill in the Black community, and he’s closely involved with some of the most exploitive corporations of working class people in the country. How can his so-called concern for the poor and middle class coexist with his association with Walmart, and Nationwide Insurance, for example? And how can he claim to be concerned about the Black community and then seek to pad his pockets by promoting R. Kelly, who was tried for allegedly appearing in an underground video of himself molesting a 14 year-old child? Sure he beat the case, but the video is still out there, and it is what it is. http://newsone.com/384692/tavis-smiley-draws-child-rape-criticism-for-publishing-r-kellys-book/
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And how can Cornel West claim to “love Black people” when he has never taught at a school that the vast majority of Black people could afford to attend in his entire career? There are many other things I could list about West, but his coalition with Ralph Nader that got George Bush elected in the 2000 election (Bush won by 537 votes. The Nader-West coalition peel off 97,488 votes in Florida alone), and his mere association with Tavis Smiley says it all. West reminds me of a guy running down the street ranting about fascism after just having lunch with Mussolini.