Who the Joe Hill is Cornel West?

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

Unpaid campaign worker for Trump: On the Democratic Party side, something very unusual happened in Campaign 2000.

Only two candidates sought the party's nomination for president—and each was a major figure! When the Democratic debates began in October 1999, there were no vanity candidates cluttering the stage with their desperate need for attention and their need to waste lots of time.

By then, this was already an unusual state of affairs. By now, our campaigns are full of people who are running to get more famous.

Unfortunately, these vainglorious pieces of patter keep sending Republicans to the White House. Last night, on CNN, Phillippe Reines told Abby Phillip about it.

Cornel West's name was mentioned. Phillip has just interviewed this latest attention-starved hopeful, who's pretending to run for president on the Green Party line. In part, her subsequent conversation with Reines went like this:

PHILLIP (9/28/23): And Philippe Reines is back with me to respond. 

So Philippe, I want to start with the comments that [Professor West] made about President Biden and his union record. He said his heart is not in it. What do you say to that?

PHILLIPPE REINES, FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: It looked like his heart was in it, but I think you made the point that this is a step in a long series of things that Joe Biden has done over his career. 

I would understand what Dr. West was saying if Joe Biden parachuted in at a nowhere, had never done anything for American workers or for labor or for average Americans, or whatever you want to call it. But he's showing up after decades of doing that, and he will do it for the rest of his life. 

[...]

But more importantly, you know, Dr. West will not be president of the United States. He might prevent Joe Biden from being president of the United States, the same way that Ralph Nader prevented Al Gore, and the same way Jill Stein prevented Hillary Clinton, and no coincidence, Joe Biden did not face any kind of meaningful third-party challenge in 2020.

PHILLIP: I assume you think he needs to drop out. How soon do you think that would need to happen?

REINES: What he's doing is pointless. I mean, but you asked him ten different ways. He's not answering. It doesn't make a difference what I think. He's not going to drop out. And he's also whipping people up. They're not going to work for Biden. They're not going to donate to Biden. They're not going to get out the vote.

Now, if it's just people in Massachusetts, okay, that's not so bad. I feel pretty good about it. But tamping down enthusiasm or by attacking the nominee of our own party, no good comes from that. And I just can't believe that he would want Donald Trump to emerge from that, but he has to realize, as a student of history and for bearing witness, as he said, all these years to what happens, he has to know that he's walking a very dangerous path.

PHILLIP: We'll see if he does. Philippe, thank you for staying around.

REINES: No, thank you for having me.

We don't know Cornel West. Over the years, there have been things we've very much liked about him—but then, along comes this.

Stating the obvious, West is an attention-starved pseudo-academic who can't get a lot of attention based on the strength of his academic or political work. In recent years, a certain kind of attention-starved person has learned that pretending to run for president is one way to acquire a lot of eyeballs and clicks.

As Reines correctly noted, West is working hard to return Donald Trump to the White House. Our blue tribe is so pathetic, so hopelessly dumb, that we will almost surely sit back and politely allow him to do it. 

Where do these needy beings come from? Why do we tolerate this?

89 comments:

  1. He may peel off blacks we pretend to care about.

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  2. What can we actually do? I would suggest confronting West in every place he can found, relentlessly demanding to know why he is helping Trump win.

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    Replies
    1. That’ll teach him. No doubt about it.

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    2. West is not an idiot. He knows he cannot win. He also knows it might hurt Biden’s chances. Which is probably ok with him. But by following him and attacking him constantly, you give him more publicity, which means more votes for him potentially.

      It’s more important, I think, for Democrats to talk up their positive record and point out the abject failures of the Republican Party.

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    3. Anonymouse 2:43pm, West wants something. Your sachems should find out what that is.

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    4. We all want something. That is the human condition.

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    5. Yes, my point was that your comment was simplistic.

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    6. Anonymouse 10:39pm, there’s a difference between what is simplistic and what is obvious.

      Obviously, you start by finding out what West wants, rather than simplistically going for your guns.

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    7. simplistic definition: "treating complex issues and problems as if they were much simpler than they really are"

      This is what you did.

      obvious definition: "easily perceived or understood; clear, self-evident, or apparent"

      You may have jumped to a simplistic solution because of how obvious it is that everyone wants something.

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    8. You don’t “jump” to the obvious, as in what is the obvious first step, you simply (not simplistically) take it.

      Both you and Bob should have understood that.

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    9. hahahaha - Cecelia generously offering political advice to Dems. LOL

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  3. While I get that there are situations where a third party siphons off enough votes to give the win to one of the major parties, this has become a crutch for our democracy. Same thing for the idea that you vote for the candidate in the primaries that has the best chance of winning.

    This mode of thinking is an impediment to progress. Call me naive but I think people should simply vote for their preferred candidate in all situations. Yes we may have to suffer a bit with some less than ideal outcomes but it will be planting the seed for future generations to have a rich, broad field of candidates and maybe eventually we could actually discuss their policies as a nation too! Instead of the gossippy, suface-level, high school type discourse we are currently stuck with. One can dream.

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  4. "Our blue tribe is so pathetic, so hopelessly dumb, that we will almost surely sit back and politely allow him to do it."

    Like 2020 and 2022 and all the special elections this year? Now who's being hopelessly dumb.?

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  5. “we will almost surely sit back and politely allow him to do it. “

    I didn’t realize “we” had the power to prevent people from running for office on the Green Party ticket.

    Now he tells us.

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    1. mh - with respect: maybe we should thing about what we might do to persuade West to knock it off.

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    2. How? By publicly attacking him, thereby giving him more publicity?

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    3. You've answered your own question. May I be so bold as to then suggest, based on your own offering, that no - we should do it another way.

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    4. Good 2:53, then you tell that to George, whom I was replying to, who says this: “ would suggest confronting West in every place he can found, relentlessly demanding to know why he is helping Trump win.”

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    5. Ralph Nader did a lot of good, but his legacy is being a spoiler for Bush. I would ask West why he wants his legacy to be a spoiler for Trump?

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    6. Don’t you think that is what West intends? He would relish the chance to dump on Biden.

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    7. @3:13 PM: since West is running for President, go to the Green Party website and ask him.

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    8. I predict that Dr. West has a personal scandal or a legal entanglement in his future.

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  6. I would be more concerned about the Democrats being too polite and going too easy on Trump and the Republican Party, rather than West.

    But every time we attack them, Somerby complains about how impolite we are.

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    1. You can't attack Trump because of something a blogger says?

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    2. Yeah that's how it works when you're nuts from subscribing to establishment thought for so long. You lose all perspective. Everything becomes irrational.

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    3. Of course not, he’s just all powerful! Of course that’s what I’m saying! Or perhaps, I’m saying that an appropriate method for campaigning brings out Somerby’s double standard to attack the Democrats, again.

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    4. Why is that important,?

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    5. Because this is Bob Somerby’s blog, and one assumes his opinions matter somewhat to his readers.

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    6. Why does it matter to you?

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    7. You brought it up in relation to attacking Trump. Why does it matter to you in relation to attacking Trump?

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    8. Really, Bob doesn’t matter at all. He became irrelevant long ago.

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    9. MH seems to feel his thoughts have some kind of a bearing on whether or not we can attack trump.

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    10. 3:04: Why does it matter to you whether it matters to me? This happens to be a blog I still read, and I don’t like double standards, whether it’s here or in the mainstream media. Pointing them out may benefit readers of this blog who aren’t aware of the inconsistencies.

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    11. I was just interested that you're framing of the issue was hyperbolic and inaccurate which throws up red flags. And you further framed it as an obstacle to attacking Trump. Which is insane. I'm just wondering why some insignificant bloggers opinion would cause you to make insane claims that you can't back up.

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    12. What is the double standard?

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    13. Anonymouse 3:47pm, mh and the anonymices have been asked that questions for years and it’s has always been met with double talk,

      Let’s just say that they don’t want to get too caught up in reality and stray from their task at hand.

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    14. West opposes Biden from the left. He thinks Biden is a neoliberal sellout. It’s similar to Bernie’s criticisms of the Democratic Party. Somerby thinks that “we” would be dumb to be too “polite” to West and “let” him siphon off votes,( as if we can prevent west from running or attracting voters). Based on 2016, it isn’t obvious that going after the far left is a wise decision, since those votes can also be lost that way.

      On the other hand, Trump and the Republican Party are the formidable opponents, but when “we” attack Trump’s lying and corruption, Somerby’s response is to berate “us” for wanting to put the Others in jail and not recognizing Trump’s insanity, which leads Somerby to pity Trump. When Biden makes speeches attacking what he calls “MAGA Republicans” for their anti-democracy leanings, (something I approve him doing, because he’s right), Somerby attacks Biden for essentially being impolite and losing potential votes.

      That’s the double standard I’m talking about. And that is the reality, in my view, so I disagree with Somerby. We are at Somerby’s blog, so his opinion is the initiator of the discussion here.

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    15. mh, how is it a “double standard” that Bob is suggesting that your party lean on its own and get West out of the way, but also try not to alienate every middle of the road American voter?

      You may think Bob’s concern for the latter is off, that’s arguable, but it’s not a double standard and it doesn’t negate the sincerity or validity of what he’s saying about the issue of West.

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    16. Thanks for explaining your faulty reasoning. Somerby never attacked Biden for essentially being impolite when Biden made a speech attacking “MAGA Republicans”. He was critical of the way Biden characterized them that way without naming them directly in the speech.

      Yet another in an endless, chronic series of basic reading mistakes.

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    17. Good point Cecelia, mh also doesn't seem to understand what a double standard is. This guys is a waste of time!

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    18. mh is the only one making any sense.

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  7. "In recent years, a certain kind of attention-starved person has learned that pretending to run for president is one way to acquire a lot of eyeballs and clicks."

    Recent years have shown us that sometimes the attention-starved pretender screws up and wins.

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  8. Why did “we” sit back and let Ralph Nader run in 2000? Why didn’t “we” get Jill Stein to stop running in 2016? Were we too polite? Wasn’t 2016 the same year “we” impolitely forced Bernie not to be the nominee? How absurd can these questions get?

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    1. You're right. It's a third party. It's their right and there's nothing can do about it really.

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    2. Ralph Nader had to confront the argument that he might be a spoiler for Bush, and his response was there was no significant difference between Repubs and Dems. We now have more perspective and see that the blood of hundreds of thousands can be laid on Nader’s head. West should be forced to explain why he prefers Trump over Biden.

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    3. Did that argument make Nader drop out?

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    4. No, but we didn’t have the Nader/Stein examples back then. We all thought that it was highly unlikely a third party would tip the election.

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    5. For all we know, the Trump campaign or the Republican party are funding West’s campaign specifically in order to be a spoiler for Biden. Just as Republican affiliated donors are doing for RFK Junior and the No Labels party.

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    6. Somerby assumes West wants Biden to win, but recklessly jeopardizes that outcome because he craves attention. I’d assume West sincerely wants Trump to win and ask him Why?

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    11. @3:48 PM - for the sake of accuracy, you should change your name to "Broken Record."

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    12. Because I use a nym, you can skip my comments if you don’t deem them worthy. Unfortunately, I don’t have that option with your comments.

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    13. Instead of reading nyms, why not skim the first sentence or two of a comment to see whether the content interests you?

      If you find something you like, then you can look and see who wrote it.

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    14. DG, I’d tell you that it won’t kill you to read anything, but then I know how it is to see anonymices twist the words of Bob or a political contrarian into pejorative pretzels.

      You’ll get to the point where that is more eye-roll inducing than shocking.

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    15. Your descriptions of what anonymous commenters do sounds just like what the Republicans did during the Impeachment Inquiry hearing. Except they got caught pretending to have evidence, quoting texts out of context, and mentioning Hunter more than Joe (with no connections made between them).

      We on the left are at the point where we wish the Republicans would deal with the debt and stop fooling around doing Trump's bidding, to shut down the govt in the hope it would derail his trials (hint: it won't).

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    16. Surprise.

      Anonymices: “We learned that crap from Republican politicians”.

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  9. Racism:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qlseJjMcYTo

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  10. LATINOS 4 TRUMP 2024🎉

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  11. Here's another potential threat to Biden's re-election

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Flirts With the Libertarian Party
    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/23/us/politics/robert-f-kennedy-jr-libertarian-party.html

    IMO RFK Jr. has the potential to take a significant number of votes away from the Democratic nominee.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, but your judgement is demonstrably deficient, David. Go back to looking for loopholes to save Trump's corrupt sorry ass from his FRAUD guilty conviction.

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    2. If Li'l Bobby goes libertarian, he's likely to take more votes from Trump than from Biden.

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    3. It has been announced that he is going to run as an Independent.

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    4. RFK will help Biden more than Trump as dumb ass vaxx deniers are by far majorityRepublican.

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  12. "Our blue tribe is so pathetic, so hopelessly dumb, that we will almost surely sit back and politely allow him to do it."

    Hmm. Presumably what you mean here is getting rid of your tribe's current presidential candidate and replacing him with someone more appealing?

    And if this isn't what you meant, you're far nuttier than I thought.

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  13. "Where do these needy beings come from?"

    Presumably, from the nuthouse holding all those who want the voters to have a meaningful choice.

    "Why do we tolerate this?"

    You don't. You work hard, very hard, trying to destroy them. Most of the time quite successfully.

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  14. Somerby doesn’t respect West’s academic work but West has been a semi-regular guest on Bill Maher’s show. That makes him a heap more famous than Somerby ever was.

    Why pick on West when there is JFK Jr and Joe Lieberman doing the same thing? And isn’t Williamson running again?

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  15. On a recent MSNBC show with the often useful Mehdi Hasan, West was asked about the Supreme Court's demolition of Roe vs Wade. He said he did not really care
    about the Supreme Court because some original members were Slave owners. Justice Marshall, apparently, is part of American History he has yet to catch up with. Hasen, somewhat surprisingly, let this sexist, obnoxious drivel
    pass. The left Press certainly could be accused of treating West, a pitiable horse's ass, with kid gloves. It's not up to "the left" or Democrats to have an official policy on him.
    While Bob is then, kinda sorta correct, did he just discover the existent of Cornel West and other fringe candidates (Bernie too) being built up as a way of aiding the Republican Candidate? The week before the 2000 election, Ralph Nader was treated by Fox News as a kind of God. Credit where due, at least Bill Maher called West out, at least once, in no uncertain terms. West made it quite clear in 2015 that Trump would be preferable to Clinton. It is not that unusual for Progressives to argue that being out of power is preferable than having an impure Democrat in the White House( Granted, you have heard less of this in recent years).
    Without worrying about his memory/health, it is
    impossible to believe this deep dive off the turnip truck by Bob is very sincere. He is even savvy enough not to use the higher profile Kennedy, because in our very strange situation it's possible Bobby might take just as much away from Trump.
    Can we talk? Trump has had a really scary couple of days, today was another with the Rico guilty plea, and Bob may just want to put these things out of his mind! No doubt considerable thought has been put into angling that what Trump said about General Millie was not that bad, but that's
    a tough one and it might take Bob a few days.
    So might Dems go after the creepy Dr. West with a little more zeal? Maybe, but that might backfire. Ahem, there are a lot more critical things to talk about....

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    Replies
    1. General Milley (not Millie) was head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US military. That's why Trump's statement was not only horrifying but disrespectful of our military, just as his denigration of Gold Star families was during his 2016 election.

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  16. "Who the Joe Hill is Cornel West?"

    Who the Sam Hill is Joe Hill?

    There are two Joe Hills. One is the son of writer Stephen King. The other is a famous labor organizer who was martyred for his cause in 1915.

    Why would Somerby call out either one? West is not a labor organizer or supporter of unions, although he is going through the motions now that he is campaigning. Nor does west write horror stories. Or is Somerby perhaps suggesting that West is NOT like Joe Hill -- but then who is?

    Meanwhile, according to ABC News, Cornel West owes more than a half million $ is back taxes and child support. A man who stiffs his own kids is not a viable presidential candidate, in my opinion.

    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/green-party-candidate-cornel-west-owes-half-million/story?id=102293692

    That leaves the possibility that running for office is some kind of grift to pay off those debts. I think that is more likely than that he is "attention-seeking" as Somerby proposes.

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    Replies
    1. Certainly makes sense but that leaves the organizers of the Green Party with some 'splainin to do, insofar as they are endorsing him.

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    2. The American Green Party is a Right-wing rat-fucking operation.

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  17. From Political Wire:

    "Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) accused President Biden in a bizarre video — without any evidence — of being involved in “prostitution rings.”

    But we're talking about what the Dems will do about Cornel West?

    In a just world, no one would be voting Republican by now.

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    Replies
    1. That’s from last April, isn’t it? As to the prostitution rings, I think Mace is talking about Sonny, not Vito.

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    2. 10;37,
      Anyone who isn't a bigot, or isn't perfectly fine with bigotry, left the Republican Party more than two decades ago.

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    3. How handy to just call all the Bidens complicit with no evidence against any of them.

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  18. This is what real media criticism looks like:

    https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2023/09/please-stop.html

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    1. Enjoyed the expose by Joyce Carroll Oats posted on that site breaking down the social media entry by David Brooks explaining why the American people are so unhappy about the economy. 78 dollars for an airport meal! His photo: hamburger, fries and cocktail. Apparently not pictured: other cocktails. From NYT expense account: food: 12 dollars, drinks: 66 dollars, tip: 0. So much for the guy that we have always known to be a phoney conservative bastian of morality.

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    2. Joyce Carol Oats didn’t expose Brook’s virtue signaling, the restaurant did. They went straight to Twitter.

      That was retweeted by everyone. Nobody likes Brooks. The restaurant put his order as an offering on their menu and named it in his honor-
      D Brooks Special.

      redstate.com/sister-toldjah…

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    3. I think the hash tag is rather impertinent.

      pic.twitter.com/ZcqHDO60eu

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    4. Brooks started it, by suggesting the restaurant was overcharging. What’s to like about that?

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    5. Anonymouse 1:32pm, we can “like” the humorousness of it.

      Brooks’ tries to give nod to the poor working man (a cohort he essentially told to “ learn to code” in 2019) by bemoaning the cost of his airport restaurant dinner and 80% of the bill was his bar tab.




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