Professor Cornel West Says President Obama Demeaned Him & Treated Him Like a Cub Scout

Princeton professor Cornel West says President Barack Obama treated him like a "cub scout," humiliated and demeaned him during an event in South Carolina.

During a recent NPR's Talk to the Nation interview, Princeton University professor Cornell West said he was upset at being talked down to by President Barack Obama. He accused Obama of treating him like a “cub scout.” It seems no matter how hard President Obama tries to stay out of race issues, he is always sucked in. While I am generally not in favor of many of President Obama's policies, I am still peeved every time I hear of race issues that always seem to dog this White House. Why is Cornel West coming forth now with to make these assertions? Why didn't he try to contact President Obama and have his grouse heard? I can't imagine the president being condescending and demeaning to Mr. West, who has done so much for race relations in this country. Are cub scouts really treated like crap?

Well, I’ll tell you, I had not talked to my dear brother since the Martin Luther King gathering in South Carolina, and very briefly Super Tuesday. But he did come and make a beeline to me after his speech on I think it was Thursday morning in Washington, D.C. I hadn’t seen him for two and a half weeks, and he made a beeline to me, though, brother, and he was deeply upset. He talked to me like I was a Cub Scout, and he was a pack master, you know what I mean?

I said, well, my mother and father raised me right. I respect my dear brother, but I don’t like to be demeaned and humiliated in that way, and I didn’t get a chance to respond to him. And I hope maybe at some time we can. But it was very, it was a very ugly kind of moment, it seems to me, and that disturbs me because then it raises the question for me: Does he have a double standard for black critics as opposed to white critics? Source: NPR

Here we go, another person, albeit a black one, saying President Obama is an elitist. Personally, I find many things emanating from the White House disturbing, specifically the issue of helping Main Street and the fact that President Obama has become toxic to Democratic candidates in the November elections. I am also disturbed by the seemingly timid nature of this president and his inability to show Americans that he is truly on our sides and not just coming across as being able to give a good speech. Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder, at least in my opinion.

Professor West also referenced the fact that President Obama has a bust of Martin Luther King Jr., in the Oval Office, but wondered if he was going to be true to what Dr. King actually stands for. He said King was concerned with the poor and the working class people and wondered if President Obama could measure up to that legacy because King was fundamentally committed to the least of these, in a direct reference to Matthew 25.