<http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee267>
.................
As an African American bloke and member -- in a difficult to define and describe sense -- of a loosely constructed and even more loosely affiliated intelligentsia -- I'm expected to leap into the air with ethnic and class pride-propelled joy at the thought Cornel West exists.
Friends, frenemies and foes alike are routinely surprised by and disappointed with my lack of enthusiasm. Why this meh-ness of response? After all, West is a smart fellow and has written and said some things with which I broadly agree.
It took awhile to sort out but I think I've got it: West is our Bernard Henri Levy. That is, there's certainly talent, style and the capacity for insight but it is smothered beneath a super-abundance of self regard and an unwillingness -- perhaps an inability -- to follow ideas and events to their logically radical conclusions.
.d.