Pressing Question of Our Time No. 47: Does Cornel West Shower In a Three-Piece Suit?
Princeton Professor Cornel West likes to talk. And we (unless we're on a sick streak in Text Twist) like to listen to him.
So naturally we flipped out upon learning that our favorite theologian/actor/MC would join 111 other "thinkers" at Dropping Knowledge, a day-long talk-a-thon held in Bebelplatz, Germany and moderated by Willem Dafoe. Basic idea: a hundred questions are read out loud, one by one, with about two minutes for the participants sitting around a massive roundtable to deliver answers into their personal webcams.
In West's case, the result is 100 two-minute lectures on everything from God to biodiversity to the linking of machinery and the human brain. (We always knew The Matrix: Reloaded would come in handy!)
Anyone who hasn't survived a Cornel West lecture needs to watch, like, three of these, and you'll get the idea. Time really flies -- West's propensity for stream-of-consciousness sermonizing means each two-minute segment is only about three sentences long.
Money quote: Personal freedom is "people having the right to their own nonsense as long as they don't engage in injurious harm to others. The right to believe what they want. To live a life, even if it appears nonsensical and ridiculous to others."
A better summary of Cornel West's career has yet to be found. Watch the videos here.
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September 15th, 2006 at 10:41 am
This guy is a bullshit artist. Imagine if Princeton could just get rid of this bullshit academic and hire a few more reaserach scientists who are studying a cure for some disease. What a showman and a disgrace to the Ivy League.
September 29th, 2006 at 12:11 am
I wish West would spend more time writing books and less time preaching around the country. That said, to say that he’s a bullshit artist or somehow unworthy of the Ivy League is bullshit. West probably knew more at 35 than most Ivy League profs learn their whole lives. (Now if he would only use that knowledge and enlighten us.)
February 21st, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Dr. West is an amazing intellectual brilliant guy. I am a white elite, middle aged woman and he speaks for me and MOST working people and artists in the world. This is a racist world and all he is judged unfairly…as usual.
October 21st, 2008 at 9:38 am
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