HARRY Belafonte's characterization of Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice as "house slaves" isn't winning him many new fans. Robert Woodson, founder of the conservative National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, led a group of fellow African Americans in a protest the other night outside the Washington Hilton, where Belafonte was being honored at an Africare gala. The protest was "to express our outrage that this self-appointed king of black America, who is nothing but a bad calypso singer, feels qualified to sit in judgment of the secretary of state and the national security adviser," Woodson fumed to the Washington Post.
Yea! Standing up for right! Love it!
MANHATTAN private eye Joe Mullen will never forget his run-ins with hell-raising "Harry Potter" actor Richard Harris, who died Friday at 72 from Hodgkin's Disease. Mullen recalls sending his two sons, Tom and Mike, to spy on Harris on behalf of the star's suspicious then-wife, actress/model Ann Turkel. The Mullen brothers found Harris at a hotel bar in Toronto. But he outsmarted them by getting them so drunk, they were too hung over to follow him the next day. Another time, Mullen tried to serve Harris legal papers in a hospital bed. (Hard-living Harris was no stranger to hospitals. He nearly died from a cocaine overdose in 1978, was said to have been in intensive care five times, and been given his last rites twice.) Because Harris had tubes coming out of his arm, Mullen left the room and told Turkel he was afraid Harris' condition would worsen if he was served. "I waited in the stairway, and Ann went in," Mullen recalls. "Within five minutes, the air was ringing with alarms. The nurse ran in and yelled, 'My God! What the hell are you doing?' " Ann was performing oral sex on him.