After Belafonte was given Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime achievement in the performing arts in 1989, he told the Ottawa Citizen: âI couldnât help thinking how much of my life had been spent at odds with these people, with the establishment, and here they were honoring me.â
I feel the urge to say something really inappropriate and unsettling while pretending to care about it, to really honour his career, you know?
FYI / FWIW: He was name-checked on WKRP in Cincinnati, as he was the real-life mayor when The Whoâs concert disater occurred there.
I feel like chanting your name and throwing a chair.
I would be honoured.
Iâll skip the slap fight.
Itâs undignified.
Whereâs my chair!
Never bring a slap to a chair fight.
In all seriousness, this is someoneâs family member and my condolences to his family. He certainly brought an entertaining brand of television to the masses.
In less seriousness, I wonder if weâre going to find out if itâs him in the coffin by a DNA test revealed at the last minute by the preacher.
So youâre saying you actually watched that shit? 
When youâre sick at home in the south and have 3 stations on the antenna, you watched a lot of daytime shit.
I watched it while in undergrad, way back in the day.
So far back, in fact, that I can remember exactly when Springer pivoted from hosting a regular talk show to the tabloid sensationalism which it became, due to the fact that trashy talk shows like Ricki Lake were dragging him in the ratings.
He punched down on every minority he could find.
You say thatâs entertaining.
I say thatâs hateful.
âDysfunctional excess
is all it took for my success.â
And there sat mom and I, gazing at an album cover of the handsomest man weâd ever seen, and listening to âScarlet Ribbons.â Harryâs voice was scratchy and smooth at the same time, and I would listen to nothing else.
I had recently switched from ukulele to guitar, and proceeded to memorize every song in his repertoire. My singing was wobbly, but hidden in my throat was âthe voice.â I found myself in an ever so amateur studio, where I donned large uncomfortable headphones and poked at the large intimidating microphone. Out of the twelve songs I recorded, six were Belafonteâs.
I could not have known then that the man with the scratchy/smooth voice and the face of brown velvet would be there ten years later walking side by side with Dr. King and myself in Montgomery, Alabama. Or that his commitment to nonviolence and civil rights was unshakable, and that as he was lifted up by the movement, he lifted up the movement with his eloquent voice, both singing and speaking.
The last time I saw Harry he was in his nineties and proud of it. His beautiful wife Pam explained to him whatever he didnât quite hear. He looked like a sage, or a prophet, or a royal. He was virtually blind, but smiled broadly and punctuated the conversation with mischievous comments. He was all there.
When my son and I left the apartment we were verging on tears.
Gabe said, âItâs like weâve just been in the presence of a fucking prophet.â
We had been.
(photo by Bob Fitch, The Bob Fitch Photography Archive at Stanford)
