Harry Belafonte Speaks Out About Debt Ceiling at Television Critics Association Gathering

84-year-old entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte has begun speaking out about the debt ceiling. Appearing in front of the Television Critics Association in Beverly Hills, Calif. the actor said he was confused about what happened to “moral truth” in the United States.

In a transcript of the session Belafonte was credited with announcing:

“My question would be to the Congress and to the President and to a lot of institutions in the United States of power, ‘What happened to moral truth? What happened to moral courage? Why has it been so eliminated from our DNA?'”

Belafonte then went on to give his own take on President Obama noting:

“Barack Obama and his mission has failed because it has lacked a certain kind of moral courage, a certain kind of moral vision that we are in need of,” while adding “there is still a lot of opportunity for that corner to be turned.”

In his speech he also said of the President:

“When he said, ‘Yes, we can,’ it may have been politically clever,” and “He never defined for us what he said…So those of us who felt that we needed change filled in that space with our own images of what we thought he meant only to find out we are all disappointed because none of those things have been satisfied.”

Belafonte it should be noted is not an economics expert, however he is a respected member of the civil rights movement who marched alongside Martin Luther King and his main message to the President and the political system remains true, what ever did happen to moral truth in politics, even if there only ever was a sliver of it to begin with.