At a poverty-reduction forum last week, Princeton professor Cornel West said he was “upset” after learning that Barack Obama was being sworn in on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Bible. West condemned Obama for using King’s “prophetic fire as just a moment in presidential pageantry” and called it a “political calculation.” “I got upset because you don’t play with Martin Luther King, Jr. and you play with his people, and by his people what I mean is people of good conscience, fundamentally committed to peace, and truth, and justice,” he said.