Intensity

Cornell West once again distinguished himself with insightful and unrelenting but respectful questioning, taking Rivlin to task for pleading for the status quo. She took offense when he said that her lofty but toothless rhetoric would lead nowhere but a shrug of the shoulders as it once again failed to have the espoused effect. She claimed that the poor were well-represented—and intimated that their representation was as successful as that of the rich. West could not let that pass without diplomatically and eloquently riposting that her statement was empirically false and she was, at best, naively hopeful and, at worst, deliberately mendacious for making it.