We interrupt this blog for a brief departure in format...

I don’t know how to explain it. I really don’t. My harsher critics (and you know who you are) will attribute it to my inbred, well-entrenched Southern terror of the sound of a strong black man’s voice. Some, with kinder hearts, will just write this diatribe off as a reactionary attack by a conservative on liberal ideology. Maybe, it’s more animalistic, like waving a red cape in front of a bull. Then still, perhaps the devil made me do it. I don’t know nor do I really care. Whatever you care to call it, after reading the June 30th issue of TIME magazine, the little switch in me that mysteriously slides to the "ON" position and causes me to spew off one or two thousand words of sheer vitriolic hyperbole has gone and done it again. My readers have probably happily noted that it has occurred less frequently of late and my submissions here have been of a decidedly "kinder and gentler" nature. This, sadly, will not continue that trend. For that, and for any (other than the subject of the rant) who might be offended by what follows, I sincerely apologize.

But, damn it to hell, when the lunacy and brummagem horse-apples issued from the keyboard of one Michael Eric Dyson crosses my unsuspecting eye, I just can’t help myself. This pompous, pseudo-intellectual, preening, condescending, motor-mouthed, book burping, self-promoting charlatan posing as a academic and apologist for all things black and beautiful makes me just want to find the tallest bridge in Zambia and jump off. Oh...er...you say I already did that? Ok, then he makes me just want to hit my keyboard to express just what a complete idiot I think he actually is. So, that is my mission, my passion and my purpose.

I first crossed paths with Dyson in 2004 after Bill Cosby spoke at the 50^th Anniversary of the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision. As you may or may not recall, Cosby took the opportunity to deliver what was later somewhat negatively portrayed as the "Pound Cake Speech". In that speech, Cosby called out the current 18-45 year old black Americans and declared that they had dropped the torch handed to them, with no little sacrifice, by their parents a generation ago. He "attacked" (a favorite phrase used by his critics) the lower-socioeconomic blacks who had a high rate of illegitimate births, crime, drug use and had the audacity to even condemn their way of dressing, their speaking in "black English" and their naming children with pseudo-African surnames. In part, he said "What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans, they don’t know a damned thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap and all of them are in jail." He was, in common parlance, "off the hook" and didn’t care who heard his words or what anyone thought of them. I will not quote much more of the speech as I have much to say myself but I encourage you to read the full transcript here. If you do, tell me where Cosby got it wrong. Please.

According, however, to the speed and vehemence that the apologist black intelligentsia reacted to the Cosby’s words, you would have thought that he was the grand wizard of the Klan, the love child of "Bull" Conner, Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun (it was a threesome) and had declared that black people were an genetically inferior as a race. All the prominent "nigarrati"(1) (see footnote) went, faster than you can say "David Duke", into attack mode. The merely opportunistic seized the moment to criticize Cosby as "insensitive to the poor" or, in more personal terms, declared that "Bill Cosby is a clown. What do you expect?" (August Wilson) I suspect Cosby accepted the honest and sincere critique of his opinion in the same spirit that anyone who takes a controversial position invariably must do.

Some among the gliteratti, however, leaped from their endowed university chairs and set about to make Cosby’s words into a cottage industry. They really had nothing constructive to say - other than to point out that Cosby was just an old man who wasn’t aware of the real facts of black suffering and, of course, they were privy to these facts and would enlighten the world as to the truth. One of these arrogant pimps was, as you may have already surmised, Michael Eric Dyson.

Teaming up with the only man on the planet who can sniff out black outrage (real or potential) faster than Al Sharpton, Tavis Smiley, he appeared on radio and TV to discuss the impertinence and misinformed comments Cosby had made about the misunderstood and downtrodden poor black American. When that seemed to produce a nice pop in Smiley’s listener ratings, the two entertainers decided to take their show on the road. As Cosby was doing after the NAACP event, they, too, would make a concert tour to educate black American on "the truth" and to shout down, so to speak, what Dyson had called the "Afristocrat in Winter" (catchy, huh? "Lion in Winter"..."Afristocrat in Winter". See? Up-scale intellectual sarcasm at its best.)

The dynamic duo recruited another member of their unique genre of professor-as-entertainer, Cornel West (who had just spent his last, emphasis on LAST, year at Harvard not teaching but producing a rap CD, what else?), to man the "Pass the Mike Tour." The only difference being the two junkets was that Cosby paid for all expenses of his tour of dozens of cities out of his own pocket; Drs. Dyson and West and Rev. Smiley financed their 6-city tour by selling tickets. The latter three were, after all, the intellectual equivalent of rock stars, were they not? Who would not pay to hear them elucidate the true "State of the Black Nation" in stark contrast to the lies and Uncle Tom-ist propaganda Cosby was peddling (on his own dime) about black self-responsibility?

But the ingenuity of the unpalatably unctuous, fustian, braggadocios, self-promoting Dyson did not take leave of his ever-philanthropic mind after the star turn of the "Tour." No, Dyson must have said to himself: "I said many things of great wit, charm and intelligence on the tour but there were only thousands who were fortunate enough to hear and understand my learned insights and grand words. In order to tell the gospel to the masses (and to make me some truly serious loot), I must write a book. That’s it! I’ll write a book!" Dyson, no virgin to the book industry, knew that authoring books had brought him fame and fortune. He had already written a number of books, including hagiographies of Marvin Gaye, Tupac Shukar, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and, lest I forget, the instant classic of scholarly insight, "Why I Love Black Women." These were, obviously, quite relevant to the level of academic excellence he brought to the faculty of each of the (many) Universities who were graced by his (brief) tenure.

And so it came to pass that he wrote "Is Bill Cosby Right or Has the Black Middle Class Lost theit Minds?" In it (which I freely admit, I did, in fact read, just as I have read other books I knew I would hate like Mein Kampf, Das Kapital and It Takes a Village), Dyson calls Cosby everything but a wealthy, talented, iconic black man and, basically, paints him as a possibly senile, philandering, uneducated, race traitor and dolt. After the character assassination is clumsily carried out at the foot of Martin Luther King’s statue, Brutus...er...ah...Dyson goes on to tell why black society is in such shambles. Here’s a hint: It is not the fault of black people.

At last, we come full circle and return to the match that lit these fireworks, the June 30, 2008 issue of Time. On page 38, there is a "Viewpoint: The Blame Game" piece discussing Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama’s Father’s Day sermonette at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago. In his address to the Church, Senator Obama, much like Cosby, called for black men to step up and be fathers to their children and leaders of their families. And who, pray tell, do you imagine the venerable Time magazine called on to write the rebuttal to these heresies to black public thought? Well, give yourself a cookie! It was our own, Michael Eric Dyson, the self-proclaimed "hip-hop intellectual", general bon vivant and apologist extra ordinaire.

In his piece, Dyson falls back on the shopworn and increasingly cliche "real" reasons why fathers have children by several women and leave them to be raised in matriarchal communities: "huge unemployment, racist mortgage practices, weakened child-care support, stunted training programs for blue-collar workers who’ve been made obsolete by technology, and the gutting of early childhood learning programs are all forces that must be combated." [One struggles to grasp how "racist mortgage practices" or the "gutting of early childhood learning programs" contribute to males impregnating multiple females, but we must struggle on without this insight].

Dyson concludes by proclaiming: "If we rightly expect more black fathers to stick around to raise their children, we’ve got to give them a greater opportunity to stay home." [Emphasis mine]

Well, well, well.

Once again, the glitterati of the black Milky Way shine down through the haze of common thought to reveal the truth to the great unwashed. It is not enough for a man who fathers a child to, a priori, assume that he has a responsibility for that child and his presence in the child’s life is part and parcel of that debt. No, that is out-dated thinking of a time long passed. According to Dyson, that’s the same kind of tripe that Cosby and Booker T. Washington before him tried to foist on the black man. The contemporary black man needs help to be a father and that help must come from outside their heart and their soul. In fact, according to the Apostle Dyson, "we’ve got to give" it to them. Apparently, we do that by dismissing and forgetting such archaic maxims like:

- you have to get an education and be reliable to get and keep a job and

- the very un-hip concept of "delayed gratification" and

- indiscriminate, unprotected sex makes many babies

Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Bill Cosby and, most recently, Senator Obama are, according to Dyson, misguided, uninformed and simply pandering for the favor of white people. Dyson and those like him continue to preach that anyone who seeks to lay the gauntlet of change at the feet of black society is wrongheaded. Likewise, anyone who dare suggest that black society is first and foremost the concern of the black citizens is illegitimately and unkindly casting the harsh light of responsibility and self-determination away from white society and directly into the hearts and minds of black America.

For those, like Dyson, who make their bread and butter off propagating the fading myth that all the ills that befall the black community are due to white man’s boot on the black man’s neck will not allow such rhetoric to pass unchallenged. If black people actually starting buying into the idea that they had the power, within themselves, to change their society and their lives by working from within their individual communities, what would Dyson have to sell to his consumers then? If all his hollow, destructive and counterproductive words of white oppression of the black race that perpetuate racial discord and distrust were suddenly disarmed and rendered moot, what would the man do?

I suppose there is always that sociology professor gig at Georgetown. Teaching may not pay as well as books and tours but, every now and then, Mike, you actually can change something for the better. That would certainly be a new experience for you but, hey, that’s what makes life fun, Professor! Try it, Mike. Teach a class!

Or, take a class from Cornel West and you, too, could make a rap CD.

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1. Before you start calling for my immediate tar and feathering or, perhaps, a boycott, I leap to inform you that the word "nigaratti" was what Zora Neale Hurston, first, and black author Norman Kelly, most recently (in his classic "The Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics"), called the intellectual, blow-hard black "leaders". I, hereby, repudiate and disavow the P.C. tenet that allows for any ethnic group to corral pet words for their sacrosanct and segregated use only. Thus, I claim the sacred right to use any and all words in common parlance to express my ideas as I see fit. Furthermore, when I can be referred to (by anyone who dares) as a redneck, honkie, trailer trash, caveman, whitie, cracker, nazi, fascist and racist - to wit, anything but a Child of God - I reserve the right to use any word or phrase in common or uncommon language I care to use. I did not invent this phrase nor do I use for any purpose other than its descriptive value. It has been used in the writings of significant black authors and I will not recognize any racially-based sequestering of words that are so exquisitely descriptive and downright brilliant.