HARRY Belafonte went on Larry King's show on Tuesday, and instead of apologizing to Secretary of State Colin Powell for calling him a "house slave," he said that National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice is a house slave too. Last week, the singer declared, "There are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master." On King's show, he called Powell a "sell-out." When King asked, "Do you have the same views about Condoleezza Rice?" Belafonte replied, "Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Even more so."

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2002

Answers

Slipping Appeal What is it about Colin Powell that drives Harry Belafonte bananas?

BY COLLIN LEVEY Thursday, October 17, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT

Here's to Harry Belafonte for coming through when we all really needed him. The impending battle with Iraq is stressful, there's a sniper stalking the Washington area, summer is over. For moments like these we pay our top entertainers so gloriously--they go well with beer, make us laugh and distract us from the world.

Just like a trouper, Mr. Belafonte turned up on "Larry King Live" Tuesday, pancaked and looking almost as he did 30 years ago crooning "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" clad in a Hawaiian shirt. True, Mr. Belafonte didn't belt out any of his timeless hits. He was on the show instead to clarify some badinage from last week, when he was quoted likening his "good friend" Colin Powell to a "house slave." To give the quote in its errant majesty, "Colin Powell's committed to come into the house of the master."

Now, this is not just another case of a Tinseltown ego trying to display intellectual depth and political awareness. Somewhere or other Barbra Streisand must be going off about Iraq and the Bush administration too. But Mr. Belafonte's performance was outstanding for its revealing honesty.

Mr. King asked Mr. Belafonte whether any of his Hollywood comrades thought he may have gone too far in slurring the secretary of state and former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff just because he happens to be black man in Republican administration.

No, said Mr. Belafonte, though some of his fellow Hollywooders "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."

This would have been a good moment to break into a chorus of "daylight come and he wan' go home," but apparently Mr. Belafonte meant his claim to intellectual superiority to be taken seriously.

All this has set idle minds to wondering about where Mr. Belafonte got the chip on his shoulder about Colin Powell. Could it be sour grapes about Mr. Powell's achievements?

Mr. Belafonte, after all, is the one who looks like a relic of a period when blacks were relegated to minstrel shows. Not to disparage his achievements or talents as an entertainer, but he made his mark at time when that was one of the few avenues to success and fame open to a black man. Was he coming into the master's house because he accepted that opportunity?

By any standard, Mr. Powell is the herald of society becoming more colorblind by the year. What job isn't open to a black man if he can be secretary of state and the dream presidential candidate of good chunk of the Republican Party? Would he be a sellout if he were president?

Mr. Belafonte may have built a second career in political activism, receiving honors from groups like Unicef for his work for children around the world. But somehow, this has become in his own mind an excuse for treating other blacks as traitors if they succeed in careers in mainstream politics and government. Back in 1998 he was just as contemptuous of the idea of Jesse Jackson taking a job in the Clinton administration.

"I have a problem with Jesse being anything [in elected politics]," he told the Atlanta Constitution. "I don't see him as a cog in the wheel, unless it's the wheel of mischief." To suit Mr. Bellafonte, in other words, blacks must forever be "outside" the system, as protesters and victims. To sit at the same table with President Bush and other leaders, in Mr. Belafonte's mind, can only be done as a house slave or Uncle Tom.

Mr. Belafonte is 75 and belongs to an America that is rapidly receding into the past. But he still ought to be able to put aside ideological prejudice and celebrate what Mr. Powell has achieved. The job of secretary of state wasn't given to him as a reward or even because he "earned" it. He got where he is because America needs its best citizens in government.

We can't go too far along this line, though, without offering a little equal time. One of the newspaper stories of the last week recounting the contretemps recalled that though the two men have friendly relations, Mr. Powell, who is of Jamaican descent and a noted authority on Calypso music, had been known to express a judgment that Mr. Belafonte's Calypso songs weren't "the real thing."

One of the more amusing ironies of this latest headbutting is the brief afterlife of Mr. Belafonte's 1957 hit after Sept. 11. It became the musical background to a flurry of satirical songs about Osama bin Laden. ("Come Mr. Taliban . . .")

By far the most popular of these satirical ditties was accompanied by a computer animation featuring none other Colin Powell on vocals, backed up by George W. Bush on bongo. Unabashedly patriotic and at the same time hilarious, the cartoon is, in a small way, a tribute to the contributions of both Mr. Belafonte and Mr. Powell to the American identity.

Ms. Levey is an assistant features editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2002

Well, he pegged Jackson right. 'course we all have, except for Jackson's supporters. LOL

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2002