Civil rights leaders spar over Bart’s return

Meanwhile, the online entertainment magazine Inside reported Thursday that NAACP President Kweisi Mfume rejected a $100,000 donation proffered in a gesture to make amends for Bart’s remarks. The magazine quoted Mfume as saying, “When they mentioned money being donated, I responded, ‘Thank you, but no thanks.’ … We’re not looking for money, we’re looking for justice. We want fairness. The NAACP is not for sale.” Mfume was clearly angered by the light penalty that the magazine meted out to Bart. “By failing to act decisively when confronted with these vicious remarks, Variety magazine has, in some respect, chosen to tolerate bigotry, with a slap on the wrist and a pat on the back,” he told Inside. On the other hand, the magazine indicated, the Variety action was viewed as an overreaction by Rony Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality. “They’re appeasing the hypersensitives [in the black community}” Innis said. “The fact that they are announcing their big penalty shows that they don’t know how irrelevant and patronizing it is to black people.”