Transcript of Harry Belafonte on Larry King Live

CNN ^ | October 15, 2002 | CNN

[ejdrapes]

KING: First, for openers, we thank Harry Belafonte for giving us this time exclusively. Second, to also inform you that I've known Harry Belafonte for over 40 years. I've also known Colin Powell for well over 12 years, consider both friends. Harry Belafonte needs no defender. His work in activism in well noted, but I will tell you that I was with him in Miami Beach when he became the first black to stay at a Miami Beach hotel.

[grammymoon]

Harry is scum.

[SternTrek]

I caught the very end of this interview. Did any callers challenge Calypso Harry on his comments about Powell?

[Orual]

I stepped away from that because I genuinely believed that the platform that I have as an artist, the work that I do with the United Nations, sits above suspicion because I have no agenda, so to speak.

No agenda? You'd need a 16-wheeler to carry his agenda around, so to speak.

[Peach]

It's always interesting to me that the more liberal a person is, the more intolerant of others they are. Colin Powell has made choices that Belafonte doesn't like. That's fine. Yet he feels it necessary to make derogatory remarks about his friend in a public forum that were unnecessarily cruel and ugly. It's always about being a "victim" with Belafonte.

[PaulJ]

...that which governs us is really the extent to which we are permitted by the forces of power in this country to do what it is we can do to make a difference.

What the heck does that mean??? Perhaps Harry ought to learn to speak English before he shoots his mouth off.

[Commiewatcher]

"Did any callers challenge Calypso Harry on his comments about Powell?"

All three of them soft-ballers, carefully screened no doubt, just what you would expect from CommieNewsNetwork.

I wish Colin would have just said "Harry who??" and went on to some other subject. Instead we now have more free publicity for a washed up nobody POS entertainer whose last major hit was back in 1957.

[laconic]

Belafonte "admires" the actor Paul Robeson. Robeson was a devout communist and supporter of Joe Stalin who went to live in Russia while his hero was murdering millions and never said one word of criticism of STalin or his policies. What would one think of some washed-up entertainer who openly "admired" Leni Reifenstahl, Hitler's favorite moviemaker?

[maximus@Nashville]

I didn't refer to him as an Uncle Tom. I said, those who sit in the service of the house and those who sit in the service of those who languish on the plantation.

No, it was not "Uncle Tom" that he said. The "metaphor" for those of you not old enough to remember when it was common usage, is "House Nigger". How dare anyone make that type of comparison and then declare "It is nothing personal" How much more personal can you get?

I find Larry King equally reprehensible for his long introduction comprising of "How much Harry Belefonte has done in the area of civil rights" I would not have brought up the name of Martin Luther King Jr. without pointing out that King celebrated accomplishments of all black men regardless of whether he agreed with their opinions or not. He must be turning in his grave.

[Axolotl]

There is a thread on the Democratic Underground unanimously hailing Harry B. as a hero for telling it like it is...

[BeAllYouCanBe]

"[snip] I marched and served, and the more recent history,
people of the moral stature, of people like Nelson Mandela."

Nelson Mandela's leadership caused thousands of blacks to have tires put on their neck and be burned alive.

To Harry "moral stature" = marxist, so the more marxist you are the more he loves you.

It is so transparent in everything he says --- those willing to play the class warfare game right out of Marx's book are good --- those that believe in equality and democracy are evil.

[Prodigal Son]

BELAFONTE: Well, some thought that the public was going to have a big problem, because the public does not come from the same kind of a sophisticated sense of history and all the different things that I've been exposed to, so I think people are going to have difficulty.

This is one of the most outrageously arrogant statements I have ever heard. He is essentially telling you right there that he is looking down his nose at the public and doesn't consider them to be as refined as he is.

There's much more for parsing in this interview, I might have a go at it later- I've got stuff to do now.

[bonfire]

I doubt Powell gives a rat's behind what a Hollywood has-been singer's got to say. No wonder CNN is going down the tubes.

[aculeus]

Harry is the sock puppet of Mrs (white, hard-left) Belafonte.

[Uncle Hal]

I saw the Larry King interview. In my opinion Harry Belafonte was sent out to attack Powell by the left wing crowd of Streisand, Asner etc. They knew that by having a black attack Powell the other liberals would not be critcised as being racist. By Belafonte attacking Powell as an "Uncle Tom", in so many words, this is the cruelest charge one black can make of another black. The lefties knew this would get everyones attention and get a lot of publicity. These same group of people had an ad in the NY Times attacking Bush. This is all a coordinated plan by the lefties to try and scuttle any war plan of Bush.

[glory]

Well, some thought that the public was going to have a big problem, because the public does not come from the same kind of a sophisticated sense of history and all the different things that I've been exposed to, so I think people are going to have difficulty. But then, people have always had a difficulty around the issue of race, slavery, and plantations...


This is the part that needs to be heard loud and clear. AMERICA--Harry Belafonte disdains you. He thinks you are a bunch of unsophisticated rubes who don't know any better, but to have the principles you do. People need to know what the people whose pockets they are lining think of them. Funny, there was a time I thought somewhat like this jerk(I was never this bad) and I consider my switch to conservatism a much more highly evolved ideology that comes with personal growth ie they are the unsophisticated simple minded rubes.

[glory]

I also should point out by the people that Harry admires coupled with his disdain for the average American could lead to a lot of dead Americans if anyone with remotely similar sentiments got in power--think Stalin. He had a lot of disdain for people he disagreed with and being a commen rube made you dispensable.
This guy needs to face some harsh criticism for his admiration of a murderer's allies. He doesn't deserve to even walk another step on this blessed land of ours. Harry, take the banana boat down to your friend Castro's little island and have a grand life. Leave the people who love America to it.

[Deb]

You're so wrong about Robeson. He was a (cough) progressive thinker who was persecuted for his beliefs by a racist country that hates singers who become Communists and sing really low.

[Travis McGee]

I work for the United Nations. I go to places where enormous upheaval and pain and anguish exist. And a lot of it exists based upon American policy."

Belefonte is just another UNamerican who puts the UN above and before the USA.

[miss marmelstein]

But remember: he was on his way down to Windows on the World - ONE HOUR TOO LATE TO BE A VICTIM! He's beginning to remind me of all those actors in the '60s & '70s who claimed they were on their way to Sharon Tate's house on that fateful night but were ONE HOUR TOO LATE TO BE A VICTIM!