I wasn't sure if I wanted to comment on Harry Belafonte's remarks, but Yahoo! thinks this is one of the six most important news stories last night and this morning. The major media sources are reporting this, including CNN and FoxNews, so the story must be important.
I'm shocked that the media would give so much time to a blatantly racist comment as though the content of Belafonte's remarks are worth sharing--maybe my expectations of the media are still too high. It would be one thing if the comments were being shared by the media in a negative light, but that's not what's happening here. In the last part of the Reuters article I linked at the top, the context of the comments are that this was unexpectedly refreshing and actually positive.
Leitner, a local sportscaster who hosts his morning talk show on KFMB each weekday, told Reuters that Belafonte was in San Diego for a performance there on Saturday.
Leitner said he was struck by the bluntness of Belafonte's remarks.
"People have become so politically correct," Leitner said. "Even on talk radio nowadays, for someone to come out, an African American, to go after Colin Powell like that ... was so unusual in this day and age that it really stood out."
The reality is these comments aren't unusual. Blacks attack other blacks for being "Uncle Toms" and "sell-outs" all the time. Anyone who listens to Larry Elder's radio show can tell you that.
Both Right Wing News and Culpepper Log have interesting comments on the Belafonte remarks. I think Culpepper Log's analysis is correct. It's Belafonte who is doing what "massuh" wants by towing the line of the liberal Democratic Party, the party 90% of blacks vote for. Belafonte is insulting Powell for being his own man, and making his own independent decisions and affiliations. Even more remarkable about Belafonte's attack on Powell is that Powell in publicly known for disagreeing with Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld on Middle East policy.
The only thing Powell and house slaves have in common is they are black. We can thank the racist Belafonte for pointing that out.
