TAVIS SMILEY VS MO’ KELLEY? A Media Personality CIVIL WAR!
A clash between two outspoken media personalities has heated up to the point where the lawyer for public TV showman and “poverty tourist” Tavis Smiley sent radio commentator and blogger Mo’Kelly a “cease and desist” letter demanding that he stop talking and writing bad about him!
Mo’Kelly — whose complete name is Morris W. O’Kelly — has been critical of Smiley’s and Cornel West’s ongoing national anti-poverty campaign.
Mo’Kelly, a 43-year-old graduate of Georgetown University who grew up in South Los Angeles, has used his KTLK-AM 1150 radio show, “Mo’Kelly in the Morning,” to comment and opine about the social and political activities of just about every Black person in the local and national news, including Smiley and West. And he has blogged his opinions about everything, including the pair’s motives, on his Mo’Kelly Report column which appears on various websites.
Most recently, Mo’Kelly received a press release from the Smiley Group Inc. advising him and the rest of the local media which received the release, that Smiley and West have scheduled yet another “poverty tour,” from Jan. 18, to Jan. 25, but this time they are calling it the “Poverty Manifesto Lecture Series.” The purpose of this series, which is slated to occur on college campuses, is to press President Obama into convening a “White House conference on the eradication of poverty in America.”
Mo’Kelly, a 43-year-old graduate of Georgetown University who grew up in South Los Angeles, has used his KTLK-AM 1150 radio show, “Mo’Kelly in the Morning,” to comment and opine about the social and political activities of just about every Black person in the local and national news, including Smiley and West. And he has blogged his opinions about everything, including the pair’s motives, on his Mo’Kelly Report column which appears on various websites.
Most recently, Mo’Kelly received a press release from the Smiley Group Inc. advising him and the rest of the local media which received the release, that Smiley and West have scheduled yet another “poverty tour,” from Jan. 18, to Jan. 25, but this time they are calling it the “Poverty Manifesto Lecture Series.” The purpose of this series, which is slated to occur on college campuses, is to press President Obama into convening a “White House conference on the eradication of poverty in America.”
After receiving this press release, Mo’Kelly invited Smiley to his Nov. 16 “Mo’Kelly in the Morning” radio show to discuss it. Smiley came and Mo’Kelly tore him up. “I gave him a lot of puff, actually,” Mo’Kelly said. “I took issue with his process. We all have a moral imperative to reduce poverty and I accept that. But Tavis has no plan, no program, no would-be law that he’s pushing. His premise does not validate his process and that’s what I was arguing about.
“He’s just trying to trick people into believing he has a process; but he does not and I have the right to say so,” he added.
Mo’Kelly, who worked as a producer on Smiley’s TV show from 2005 to 2010, said he knows Smiley very well, both personally and professionally.
“When Obama was elected, Tavis said: ‘We need to find a love language to critique this president,’ which sounded good to me and I reminded him of it when he was on the show. I asked him how that earlier comment squares with him now calling Obama ‘a Black corporate plutocrat’ and ‘a Republican Rockefeller in blackface,’ and the other things he and West say about the president,” Mo’Kelly said.
Several days following the radio show that hurt Smiley’s feelings, Mo’Kelly received a letter from Browning & Browning law offices advising him, in effect, to shut up talking, blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, or using “other similar Internet platforms” about Smiley because he signed a confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement with Smiley when he left his employ on Nov. 14, 2010, and if he did not stop, all manner of bad legal things will happen to him.
Mo’Kelly is nonplussed by this legal threat because he said Smiley is “supersensitive.” “He can’t stand to be criticized,” Mo’Kelly said. “He’s made some kind of stink about everything I’ve written or said about him. He called Lee Bailey to try to get a column I wrote removed from EUR because it was unflattering to him.
“And he wrote a long letter to a Chicago TV station when it dropped his show because he didn’t like what they said about him when they cut him loose.”MoKelly’s official response to Smiley’s “lawyer letter” is: “I have a podcast available to everyone to hear and review. There was no privileged or proprietary information divulged and everything discussed on the air was factually accurate and readily available to the public.
“Smiley has made himself considerably wealthy over the years criticizing public figures. Smiley is not in any way comfortable with being criticized, although he, too, is a public figure. I highlighted the glaring contradiction given the methodology of his ‘poverty tour.’ Such critique is well within my purview. Tavis has my phone number; it hasn’t changed — just my status as his employee.”
There were calls to Smiley’s Crenshaw Boulevard office for his comments on this matter, but the call was intercepted by a woman who told folks they should talk to his lawyer, since the letter came from him. The lawyer’s letter speaks for itself.
Listen to the podcast HERE!
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