Following up on a post from last week, I thought that the video of Obama introducing Derrick Bell at HLS in 1990 would have long blown over by now. It's a real non-event. Alas, March seems to be a slow news month, and Sean Hannity is still dragging this along. Here's an article (with video) of a seven minute segment on the Hannity Show, I guess from Friday night. Hannity takes a couple of quotes of Bell and then tries to apply those ideas to Obama. At one point ties to link Obama to Minister Farrakhan by quoting Bell in praise of Farrakhan. Still is really stretching things.
If we're going to continue this conversation, could someone please focus on the core of Bell's ideas? That would give a fairer rendition of what Obama was talking about when he asked students to open their hearts to the writings of Professor Bell. And when we do that — when we focus on Bell's key writings, like his interest convergence theory — I think we'll find that to be pretty conventional thinking. But a second point here — if you really want to get a sense of which of Bell's work Obama is most interested in discussing, take a look at the syllabus of his course on race and law at the University of Chicago. That syllabus drew heavily upon Bell's Race, Racism, and American Law casebook.
Well, I think Obama should be embarrassed to be associated with Derrick Bell. I mean, Bell was an _awful_ baseball player- not just over-rated, though he clearly was that, but just no good. When you figure in his bad fielding and his bad attitude, he was probably below replacement value. Even if we ignore his "operation shut-down" nonsense at the end of his career, there's no good explanation for supporting someone like Derrick Bell. I mean, supporting the Cubs can perhaps be excused by local influence and nostalgia, but I'd hope our president would have at least a bit of sabermetrical sophistication, and would know that Bell was never any good at all.
Wait… you mean this wasn't about Derrick Bell the baseball player, but the legal scholar? Well then, this really is dumb, dumb enough that you can _almost_ feel sorry for people dumb enough to care about it. Or you could, if you didn't suspect they were working for evil.
Obama is a great person.
Can I say that I feel pretty bad that only a sp*mmer seemed to think my Derick Bell joke was worth commenting on? Did no one here watch baseball in the late 90's?
Spammers are some of our most perceptive commenters!