An open letter to Kevin Powell should be forthcoming. In the meantime, please see Errol’s Saturday, July 19th column below:
Errol Louis
Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle and other stars come out for a bully
Saturday, July 19th 2008, 11:55 AM
When conservatives accuse liberals of defining deviancy down and excusing unacceptable behavior, they are talking about situations like the case of Kevin Powell, an author and community activist currently mounting a long-shot bid to unseat Congressman Ed Towns in Brooklyn’s 10th District.
As I wrote in 2006, Powell has a long history of directing physical violence at innocent people – yet big-name left-wingers like Gloria Steinem, Dave Chappelle and George Soros are going ga ga over him.
When I interviewed Powell last week, he gave the same response as last time: that he’s really, really sorry for his thuggery and has put it behind him with the help of therapy and an analysis of the social roots of violent behavior.
He says this eloquently and with conviction. I don’t buy it.
While Powell attempts to make his violence sound like a long-ago nightmare, the truth is that he has repeatedly hit, beaten and (yes) bitten people – mostly people smaller and weaker than him – in incidents documented over a 17-year period.
In the mid-1980s, according to Powell’s account in his book “Who’s Gonna Take the Weight,” he was a “student leader pimp” at Rutgers University who mistreated women – including physically – and was eventually expelled after brandishing a knife during an argument with another student (“My intent was to scare her into submission,” he says in the book).
According to a 2003 article in Newsday by Katti Gray, there was at least one other time Powell menaced a woman with a knife at Rutgers.
The pattern continued after Powell’s expulsion, when he ended up on the MTV show “The Real World” in 1992, and another cast member accused him of brandishing a heavy candlestick and threatening to break all her fingers.
In 1996, Powell got fired from his job as a writer at Vibe magazine after an outburst in which he had to be physically restrained. Five years later, in 2001, he got arrested for attacking Brooklyn writer Knox Robinson (Powell believed he’d been misquoted).
And in 2004, according to an item in the New York Post, Powell “sucker-punched” a writer named Bart Graham in the course of an argument. “After security pulled me off, he crawled over and bit me in the shin,” Graham told the Post. That was four years ago.
On page 65 of his book, Powell compares himself to “a recovering alcoholic or a crack fiend who has righted her or his ways,” and warns that “I can lapse at any time.”
At any time?
A rational, reasonable reading of Powell’s rap sheet leads to the conclusion that he lacks the stability and self-control required of a member of Congress.
Yet he has been embraced and endorsed by an A-list of Hollywood celebrities and liberal establishment figures – people who, in my opinion, are either completely out of their minds or surprisingly careless about extending their names, reputations and money to an ambitious pol with a dubious past.
Especially those who consider themselves heroes of women.
There’s billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who donated $500 to the Powell campaign; feminist icons Gloria Steinem and Susan Taylor, whose names appear on a support group called Women for Kevin Powell; and comedians Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock.
Some of Powell’s support stems from a desire to hit back at incumbent Rep. Towns, who has angered liberals and unions by supporting free-trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA and endorsing Rudy Giuliani for reelection in 1997.
But liberal reformers should realize they only hurt their cause and make themselves look ridiculous by failing to take a stand and acknowledge that the violent personal conduct makes an otherwise attractive pol completely unfit for office.