Harry Belafonte: Pompous Ass
There. It needed to be said. Harry Belafonte can run around calling Colin Powell and Condi Rice “house slaves” and “tyrants,” but people seem afraid to call the man what he is: an over-rated, sanctimonious prick who at some point got the idea that he was an intellectual and a statesman. Where he got the idea he was anything more than an aging actor is beyond me.
He seems to have made another go at of it at a shindig down in Atlanta where every race-baiter worth his or her salt had gathered to claim that Bush and the Republicans were the second coming of Hitler. Perhaps those gathered need to be reminded about political party history in the United States, about which party was the party of slavery and which party used the filibuster to prevent civil rights legislation. And how’s this for completely lacking self-awarness? Jesse Jackson said: “Race baiters and discriminators may go underground, but they never move out of town.”
If you think I’m overreacting about the Nazi bit, check out this from Harry:
“Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich,” Belafonte said when discussing his “tyrants” remark. That’s the sort of remark that would bring many other people down because it sounds so anti-Semitic.
Of course, assuming he was in the company of sychophants only, Belafonte clammed up when pressed.
When asked specifically who was a “black tyrant” in the Bush administration, Belafonte responded to this reporter, “You.” When this reporter noted that he was a Caucasian and attempted to ask another question, Belafonte abruptly ended the interview by saying, “That’s it.”
Courage of your convictions and all that, I guess.
I had the distinct honor of seeing Belafonte treat reporters like this first hand at a fundraising event for the Apollo earlier this summer. I was loitering with the rest of the media at the red carpet. Belafonte deigned to deal with the first reporter… someone from BET. Then he talked to the second, but was clearly miffed that she was from BET as well and was therefore wasting his time. (”Why can’t these troublesome people get on the same page,” his attitude seemed to say.)
But his true colors, as they were, came out when the fellow from the New York Times, the only white guy in the line, tried to ask him a question.
Belafonte looked down his nose, looked at the guy like he was a turd on the bottom of a new shoe, and said, “And who are you?”
The reporter explained and Belfonte gave him another smirk, seemed like he was going to walk away, and then launched into what seemed to be a long, off-the-top-of-his-head lecture–and that’s what it was–about the black community. He didn’t say anything insulting in that particular spiel but it was clear that he was lecturing the dim-witted racist white boy.
CNS link via La Shawn Barber. More from Jawa. More from Malkin
Cross posted at As I Please, where you can find what may very well the first Chamber Pot Post. Also, if anyone wants to throw a couple hundred votes my way, feel free.
Let Harry go!
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