In a "Joy Behar Show" segment scheduled to be aired on HLN Friday, singer Harry Belafonte attacked Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain in potentially the most disgraceful manner of any media member to date.
While his host and others on the set laughed, Belafonte called Cain "a bad apple" that was "so denied intelligence...I don’t think prayers were created for him" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JOY BEHAR, HOST: Now, let me interrupt you for a second, because now you have someone like Herman Cain.
HARRY BELAFONTE: Who?
BEHAR: Herman Cain?
BELAFONTE: Herman Cain?
BEHAR: You know who he is. [Laughs] And he doesn’t believe that racism holds anyone back in any way now. I mean, you know, what do you think about that statement?
BELAFONTE: Well, you know, it’s very hard to comment on somebody who is so denied intelligence…
[LAUGHTER FROM BEHAR AND OTHERS IN THE STUDIO]
BELAFONTE: I just want to make this observation about Herman Cain. The Republican Party, the Tea Party, all those forces to the extreme right have consistently tried to come up with representation for what they call black, what they call the real negroes, and try to push these images as the kinds of voices that America should be living through. So we got Condoleezza Rice, we got Colin Powell. I know they’re heroes for some people, but for a lot of us they’re not.
And Herman Cain is just the latest incarnation of what is totally false to the needs of our community, and the needs of our nation. I think he’s a bad apple, and people should look at his whole card. He’s not what he says he is.
BEHAR: No. I don’t think he has a prayer anyway in the election actually.
BELAFONTE: I don’t think prayers were created for him.
[LAUGHTER FROM BEHAR AND OTHERS IN THE STUDIO]
What the heck is going on in this country when black conservatives are held in such contempt by the Left that musicians can go on a nationally televised program created by a so-called news network and speak so disgracefully about the object of their derision while the host and others in the studio laugh with approval?
I'm not sure what's worse - the invective spewed by this disgusting man or the fact that representatives of CNN reacted the way they did to his comments without any concern for how it might be received.
I sincerely hope the folks at CNN and Time Warner are proud of what they're going to air Friday night, and that they realize likely 50 percent of the nation will be shocked and appalled by it.
