122 RACHEL PRESENTS THE LINEUPS! Are the Sunday guest lists balanced? We hope someone does the work: WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 2011

Obama likes to hang out with the Jews: Pretty amazing.

Cornel West appeared on last evening’s Ed Show. West has been annoyed with Obama, as Big Ed revealed at the start:

SCHULTZ (5/17/11): OK. You used the term “black mascot.” You have also called President Obama a "black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs" and a "black puppet of corporate plutocrats." And now he has become "head of the American killing machine and is proud of it."

Is this personal?

“It’s certainly not personal in terms of somehow saying that he is outside of the human race,” West somewhat comically said. But soon, we hit the part which was pretty amazing. Once again, West complained about the way Obama likes to hang out with the Jews:

SCHULTZ: OK. You’ve also chosen to analyze the president on what seems to be a very deeply personal level. Your quote is, "I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men." What did you mean by that?

WEST: What I meant was that I think that—keep in mind, I affirm his humanity and I want to respect and protect him. But what I meant by that was his formation is such that I think he does have a predilection much more toward upper middle class white brothers and Jewish brothers, and has a certain distance from free black men who will tell him the truth, both about himself as well as what’s going on in black communities, brown communities, red communities and poor white, working-class communities.

Obama has a predilection toward whites and toward Jews.

Let’s be clear: On balance, we have always been a major fan of the way West talks about race. But that remark struck us as very strange—though neither Schultz, not later guest Melissa Harris-Perry, said a word about it.

And yes, we used the term “once again.” West was booked on Big Ed’s show because of the remarkable interview he recently gave to Chris Hedges. For Hedges’ full report, click this. Here’s the part about the way Obama likes to hang out with the Jews:

HEDGES (5/16/11): “I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men,” West says. “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. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation. When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening. And that’s true for a white brother. When you get a white brother who meets a free, independent black man, they got to be mature to really embrace fully what the brother is saying to them. It’s a tension, given the history. It can be overcome. Obama, coming out of Kansas influence, white, loving grandparents, coming out of Hawaii and Indonesia, when he meets these independent black folk who have a history of slavery, Jim Crow, Jane Crow and so on, he is very apprehensive. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination. It is understandable.

“He feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want,” he says.

Obama “feels most comfortable” with white and Jewish men. But at least it’s “understandable.” And not only that! As it turns out, Obama is “just as human as” West.

We strongly suggest that you read the whole interview, one of the most amazing we have ever read. As we said, we’ve always admired the way West talks about race—although we’ve never been able to form a view about his actual scholarship. That said, West has been a Very, Very Important Person for a very long time—and he is very, very peeved at the way Obama ignores him.

Bill Clinton made Newt Gingrich use the back door of Air Force One. And not only that! Barack Obama doesn’t return West’s phone calls!

To our ear, the price we pay for celebrity culture simply shrieks out from that interview. So does the danger in the freedom we liberals have been giving each other to talk major smack about race.

Across the Atlantic, another professor has been talking major embarrassing nonsense this week (just click here). Is Cornel West a serious scholar? We’ve never been able to figure that out. But we feel fairly safe in saying this:

Most professors pretty much aren’t, not in any way which matters. People like Paul Krugman excepted, this only seems to become more true the higher you go up the ladder.

At any rate, Obama likes to hang with the Jews! Neither Schultz nor Harris-Perry seemed surprised by that.

An historical note: During Campaign 2000, West was a major player in the Bradley campaign. There was nothing wrong with that, of course—in our view, quite the opposite. But that was the same campaign in which the mainstream “press corps” fly-specked Naomi Wolf’s three books, looking for any tidbit they could use to slime Candidate Gore.

As we’ve noted in the past: On any page of The Cornel West Reader, you could find racial and sexual statements which were more “transgressive” than anything Wolf ever wrote. (That doesn’t mean those statements are wrong.) But the “press corps” didn’t fly-speck West. You see, he was working with Bradley.

It’s good that the mainstream “press corps” didn’t make a joke of West’s work. But they played the fool about Wolf for a month, in amazingly ugly ways. And of course, Jonathan Chait kept his trap tightly shut.

William Kristol and William Safire both spoke up in defense of Wolf. Not a peep out of Chait, who was so clear—last week!—about how vile this was.

To read our account of that month-long disgrace, click this. (Careful, though—there are millions of words! We’ll finish the chapter early next month.) Presumably, this was the kind of conduct Dan Kennedy had in mind when he said that the coverage of Candidate Gore amounted to “a virtual wilding.”

How strange, that so few “liberals” spoke up! Until twelve years later, we mean.

One last point: Candidate McCain was paying $20,000 per month to Richard Quinn, who really was way out of the mainstream in certain ways. For the most part, the press corps averted its gaze about that. (Saint McCain was the world’s greatest man!) One surprise: In that case, the New Republic got off its duff and actually did some good work.