Cornel West

he's my American hero for calling that smug awful melt "A Rockefeller Republican in Blackface" and stating correctly that his fiscal policies were further to the right than Nixon's. Fuck yes, inject that angry political rhetoric into my veins. If he's offending some melts then good for him.

west is a talking head in a not-very-good coltrane doc from 2017-ish: there to gab abt jc's cultural importance even tho he clearly knows v little abt music in any helpful or concrete sense -- anyway (to semi-quote a review i wrote at the time) cw's contribution was one of twinkly down-with-the-streets bullshitting that was at least somewhat signalling that he knew the doc was p bad and was playing along with that (for you to spot and the director not to)

i didn't like the doc but i did kind of enjoy his role in it, the sort of thing that's these days (incorrectly) termed "performative": a mode which reflects elements of his cultural politics i think, and how you should carry yrself in the world

I can't read the Cornel West piece because WSJ is paywalled but the opening paragraph does give some context fwiw - the thing he seems to be praising DeSantis for is allowing for Clasic Learning Test scores to be submitted in lieu of SATs to get scholarships. Considering the racially fraught history of the SATs I can easily see how someone like West would find that a good move. That being said though, it's not really something to write an op ed about when DeSantis is currently also pushing through horrifying legislation, and West should know better than to think that the WSJ wouldn't frame it in reactionary terms; guessing he was probably aware of the title, too.

People's Party seems a total mess yeah, agree with treesh that trying for a primary within the dems would have been a better choice; frankly even the greens would be a better choice, also a mess but at least they have wider reach. I don't think signing up with them will have any effect on the actual elections but I do worry a little about what hanging out with pieces of crap like Jimmy Dore is going to do to West's thinking on issues he's been previously distant from but sound on, such as trans rights.

People party only has ballot access in3 states so far

I thank my dear brother Russell Brand for providing the stage for my presidential announcement! He is a progressive gem! https://t.co/vhJNqeSp9Y https://t.co/lzAhJDwEus

— Cornel West (@CornelWest) June 6, 2023

At least it wasn't Joe Rogan

Cornel West is a fascinating blend of righteous seriousness and deeply laughable unseriousness

That’s part of why he is very human, I think. I really do think he possesses a fundamental decency that sets him apart from russell brand, jimmy dore, and these other people he seems to be associating with.

I hope he doesn’t ruin his legacy. From my brief interactions with him, I really did end up seeing him as a kind of role model.

lol, I'm going to try and believe he doesn't know how much of a worthless brainwormed arsehole Brand is... but struggling a bit here

Not sure he knows. He is 70 years old, probably a little out of the loop with online stuff.

Joining Jimmy Dore’s party is a bit o O too. Not sure the Britishers here know him but he’s a former comedian who self describes as a leftist, but, among other things, is an anti-vaxxer and advocates for the left to ally with the far right.

Why are the “comedian” podcasters not funny at all? Dore, Rogan, to a lesser extent Brand

Because comedians aren't funny?

I think you might have nailed it there

Plenty of heavily online 70 year olds these days (nb West may not be one of them)

srsly I didn't get stand-up in the '90s, where I was supposed to laugh at cripples and gays and old women and Blacks, and I'm not sure why people still watch it.

For some reason it is a reactionary genre, even though people who are funny in conversation are hardly ever this way

I'm not gonna defend stand up comedy on ilx because that's a losing battle but it is not a "reactionary genre", there's tons of high profile progressive comedians, queer comedians like Hannah Gadsby and Mae Martin are huge, etc. There's also successful reactionary choads sure, think there might be an example or two of musical artists that fit that bill discussed in these forums over the past months.

It doesn’t absolutely have to be that way but most stand-up seems to me to making fun of others from some sort of safe, above-it-all position.

At some point I developed some kind of allergy to hearing the Comedy Channel of whatever it is called on XM. Whereas years ago I always enjoyed the comedy block segment of typical FM programming.

I’m sure there are no doubt tons of great open-hearted stand-ups out there I just haven’t heard and I am only focusing on the negative.

https://i.ibb.co/jz0bPJz/Screenshot-2023-06-07-at-05-14-51.png

Cornel in the WSJ, not sure who the other guy he wrote the article with is though a quick twitter search shows in re-tweeting Matt Walsh.

he's the guy who created the Classic Learning Test

I’m sure there are no doubt tons of great open-hearted stand-ups out there I just haven’t heard and I am only focusing on the negative.

The long and short of it is that the stand-up world went through the same social justice debates over the past twenty years or so that the rest of society has, prompting a preoccupation with giving more space to comedians from marginalized backgrounds, soul searching about the various isms about famous comedian's material (the whole punching up/punching down framing comes from stand-up)...and of course also the backlash to that stuff and ppl positioning themselves as brave truth tellers against the liberal orthodoxy etc. As a rule of course the alt comedy scene is gonna be more inclusive than the big stadium acts but some of those alt comedians are pretty huge (even moreso in the UK where I think there's very little differentiation - James Acaster certainly the biggest name amongst younger ppl and famously trans inclusive).

I’m sure there are no doubt tons of great X there I just haven’t heard/seen/read and I am only focusing on the negative.

― CeeLô Borges (James Redd and the Blecchs),

forgive the editing but i reckon this covers 98% of ilx swipes at broad genres, disciplines, ethos(es?), methods, modes /everythings/ these days

it is a relentlessly negative place and it celebrates that and i think its too big a topic for any one thread

No it isn’t

wins otm

wow im cancelled

I think poster Darragmac is broadly correct, though I would say the real problem is not negativity so much as nastiness.

Tell you one thing I am negative about, poster dm’s shtick.

I was making a targeted statement about a certain virulent strain of toxic comedy that ends up in raw dog, shock jock nonsense that still seems pretty prevalent in certain large bands of the airwaves and etherwaves. He then edited my post into some very broad brush about negativity, and when wins and I pushed back he did his little po’ mouth celebration and said “oh, look at me! Cancelled.”

Why don’t you fix my post again, my friend, to distort whatever I said into what I really meant, according to your lights and then give me static if I respond again?

Daniel_Rf, on the other hand, provided some very thoughtful positive content and actual information and not just rude 'tude.

it wasnt at all meant to focus on your statement as a single item and apologies that it might have come across as that, i found it an interesting sentiment that did dig at something at the heart of where ilx has been heading for a good while

i noted the edit in that spirit!

and its not quite what pinefox says, i do mean the conscious/unconscious focus that ilx (as far as it is an entity or zeitgeist or w/e) puts on finding the possible downside to anything and then somewhat insists that that is the main/only focus that can be applied

again apologies for it coming across differently, no intent to do so

now

reading again

in fact

your approach is very much "standup is this in line with what was already being said on thread so yes a broad and i suspect you know yourself nonsense statement but allowable

what youve done subsequent to my post, which was as ive said and apologised for possibly too open to being misread, is misread my response to wins as anything other than reasonably easily spotted riff on the current cancelled thread and discourse as opposed to my actually bemoaning cancellation after a fairly light wins tweaking

i dont think thats anything other than you reading cloudily but its a poor reading and the responsibility for it rests with you not me, enjoy it tho

deems i feel like the least you can do is offer the exact same generosity of spirit that others would deny you here; consequently i'd say that the best thing to do here is wish good morning and not litigate because who loves court frankly

speaking of generosity of spirit, that seems to be Cornel West's entire thing and it seems pretty laudable to me

the initial irritation is a fair cop and lets not tbh

ofc, and 'i am not loving poster dm's shtick' is copy-pasted nu-ilx let's-agree-to-ostracise by the absolute book, but scrapping shdn't be our game was my thought, we play joga bonito now, and more importantly we show it can still be played, you get me

No it isn't

Who am I to ostracize anyone? Was just responding to one tiny string of posts. This is ridiculous.

fuck, i went too near the courtroom. it has such gravity

jaysus lj

guys THIS GUY IS NOT MY LAWYER

my point is you gotta play the ball not the man, saying someone has a 'shtick' is automatically ad hominem, gets everyone antsy. in this case it was clear you were just talking about punch-down stand-up, but in the same breath claiming without basis that (i paraphrase) 'most stand-up is this' whereas the real picture is much more complicated clearly, deems made the valid point that often on nu-ilx, guilt by association is a powerful vibe, safer to throw the baby out and so on, then had a bit of a yuck with wins, def all just a bit of light eyerolling, nobody got hurt

also i call to the stand uh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNyrYiljeIw

dm — commonly known as “dagz” — is an essential part of what makes ilx ilx. You can’t “not like his schtick” and still like the site imo

On the point of standup comedy though, I actually disagree with him. I think it sucks.

it usually does but then you see neil hamburger and you realise it can be the greatest of all artforms

One of my students said I should do standup after I told a funny anecdote and I gave them a detention

I was making a joke

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkG4oIPT7tU

Once every few months I remember that Cornel West was in the Matrix sequels playing himself ("Councilor West"): pic.twitter.com/1EWmYkPrr1

— Ben Burgis (@BenBurgis) June 7, 2023

my point is you gotta play the ball not the man

the opposite is true. play the man not the puck

saying someone has a 'shtick' is automatically ad hominem

no

lmao President Keyes

he's the guy who created the Classic Learning Test

Looks like Cornel is on the board there so thats probably the connection

West has decided not to run with the people's party, eyeing a green party bid instead it seems.