(via Newsbusters)
Nelson Mandela’s a spiritual giant, moral titan, and political revolutionary. We are witnessing the Santa Clausification of Nelson Mandela. We turned the revolutionary into an old man, a huggable old man with toys in a bag, smile on his face, no threat to anybody, domesticated, tamed, and no longer really full of the fire.
Apparently criticism of the eulogizing of Nelson Mandela in the media is not limited by the political spectrum. Radical professor Cornel West believes the media is glossing over Mandela’s more menacing side as a radical and revolutionary. There have been voices from the right suggesting the media’s near beatification of Mandela in the wake of his death has failed to point out some of his more controversial and less admirable moments. For Cornel West, it is those very moments that we ought to be lauding as the most important part of his legacy.