Belafonte blasts Homeland Security
New York Entertainer Harry Belafonte, one of the Bush administration’s harshest critics, compared the Homeland Security Department to the Nazi Gestapo on Saturday and attacked the president as a liar.
“We’ve come to this dark time in which the new Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having their rights suspended,” Belafonte said in a speech to the annual meeting of the Arts Presenters Members Conference.
“You can be arrested and not charged. You can be arrested and have no right to counsel,” said Belafonte.
Belafonte’s remarks on Saturday – part of a 45-minute speech on the role of the arts in a politically changing world – were greeted with a roaring standing ovation from an audience that included singer Peter Yarrow of the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary and members of the arts community from several dozen countries.
Messages seeking comments from Homeland Security and White House officials were not immediately returned.
Ford’s pneumonia keeps him in hospital
Rancho Mirage, Calif. Former President Gerald Ford underwent further treatment for pneumonia Saturday at a hospital where he was admitted a week earlier.
“His pneumonia continues to improve,” Penny Circle, Ford’s chief of staff, said in a statement. A decision about when he will be released is being considered on a day-to-day basis, Circle said.
Ford, 92, was admitted to the Eisenhower Medical Center near his desert home on Jan. 14. The nation’s 38th chief executive was initially expected to be discharged by Thursday, but doctors decided he needed additional therapy.
It was Ford’s second hospitalization in five weeks. He had been admitted to Eisenhower Medical Center in mid-December because of what Circle called “a horrible cold.”
Portrait of Washington sells for $21.3 million
New York Charles Willson Peale’s full-length portrait of George Washington on the American Revolutionary War battlefield fetched $21.3 million at auction Saturday, setting a world record for the sale of an American portrait, Christie’s auction house said.
“George Washington at Princeton,” signed and dated 1779 by the Revolutionary period’s premier portrait artist, was one of eight full-length portraits of Washington painted by Peale between 1779 and 1781. It was the only one known to be in private hands.
Art dealer C.L. Prickett purchased the painting. Christie’s had said earlier it was expected to fetch $10 million to $15 million.
It was offered as part of a collection of American furniture and arts from Natalie Knowlton Blair, who with banker husband J. Insley Blair bought the painting in 1919. Knowlton Blair died in 1951.
The entire collection, which includes a 1729 chest of drawers by Robert Crosman and an 18th-century Queen Anne mahogany card table, sold for $32.3 million, setting a record for an Americana collection, Christie’s said.
The sale price of the portrait more than doubled the previous record for an American portrait sold at auction – Sotheby’s sold a half-length portrait of Washington in November for $8.1 million.