Yeah I was over the top there. He’s smart and prolific. Public intellectuals are important, it just feels like he’s in that class that cares about spectacle over substance.
There is a growing number of academics who might argue that the spectacle can be part of the substance. For quite a long time, spectacle (or even advocacy) has been regarded as problematic in academia, particularly in the sciences. I see a lot of what West does as making “good trouble” that gets really important philosophical issues added to the general discourse