"How dare you!!??..." Joan Rivers tears into former Black Panther-turned-broadcaster Darcus Howe on this morning's edition of Midweek. No punches were thrown, but it was a close-run thing. (Trouble starts about 23 minutes in, when Howe rashly implies that the comic has a hang-up about race.) Presenter Libby Purves demurely moves on to another subject, like a hostess stepping over a dead body at a tea-party.
Good for Joan, I say. Howe isn't used to being answered back, much less being called an SOB.
UPDATE: Interviewed afterwards, Libby P sides with JR:
I have a lot of sympathy with Joan because she felt she was defending herself against something pretty heinous.
Darcus did that thing that activists sometimes do, saying 'I have been persecuted by all white people from day one'. Being British, we tend to just say: 'Oh, sorry you feel like that'. But Joan is not British, she's American, she's in her 70s, and she just took him on.
"Being British, we tend to just say: 'Oh, sorry you feel like that."
There is that... but I also think that due to the history of black /white relations in the US, racism raises stronger feelings here in the States than in Britain. We, after all, have a long and bloody history of race relations. Charges of racism are not taken lightly here.
Additionally, Joan Rivers is Jewish and many Jews feel they understand the plight of blacks better than others - they having also suffered significant discrimination over the years.
I don't know who Darcus Howe is, or what his particular claim to fame may be, but I suppose that he doesn't have much experience dealing with Americans.
Posted by: Jake | Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 04:39 AM