My Summer Lair Chapter #47: Does Our Society Have Enough Prophets To Facilitate Justice?
Well this is a supreme pleasure. One of the coolest aspects of this Girth Gig is to sit down with the people I read and follow and to engage them. Almost 50 episodes of My Summer Lair and on the surface it appears to be a strange group of creatives and yet they are all united because they boldly operate out of their curiosity. The ability to question and to follow whatever the answers may lead is a rare and beautiful skill. It of course won’t always endear you to others. I’m grateful individuals like Cornel West remain undaunted.
To quote my introduction:
My time with Professor Cornel West was short. I’m on an assembly line of journalists which is frustrating since the topics he discusses can’t be deftly distilled into a few minutes. Can you sum up hope in 2 minutes? Or detail the tension between heresy and hypocrisy with a ticking clock?
Still I’m grateful for the time we had. I open the interview discussing his recent-ish book The Radical King which restores Martin Luther King; history is a sandpaper that smooths out the raw and rough edges of complex personalities…this puts MLK back in your face. There’s a solid Simpsons line I often go back to…Homer Simpson was getting instructions from a director who told him: “I don’t know what you’re in, but it’s not my face.”
I close with with a Bible verse Luke 19:40:
“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
This was Jesus’ response to the establishment who demanded his disciples shut up i.e stop causing all that trouble.
It’s not common practice for me to close interviews on Bible verses but it’s telling when I asked the question Brother’s West’s eyebrows went up.
Cornel West @ W • T • F
Host Sammy Younan
Recorded: Friday May 19, 2017 at 6:00pm (at Ryerson University)
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