Dick Van Dyke recites Civil Rights speech while endorsing Harris: 'Hatred is not the norm'
Dick Van Dyke, who is just shy of his 99th birthday, says he's casting a ballot for Vice President Harris in Tuesday's election, while sharing a Civil Rights movement-era message denouncing hatred.
"I'm Dick Van Dyke. You may remember I used to sing, dance, and fall down a lot, actually," the former eponymous sitcom star said in a video posted Monday on his YouTube channel that was titled "VOTE!! @kamalaharris."
"Fifty years ago, May 31, 1964, I was on the podium with Dr. Martin Luther King, who was addressing some 60,000 people in the Coliseum in LA," the "Mary Poppins" actor said.
"I was there to read a message written by Rod Serling, the guy who wrote 'The Twilight Zone.' I got it out the other day and I think it means as much today as it did then," Van Dyke, who turns 99 next month, said as he recited some of the remarks from half a century ago.
"Hatred is not the norm. Prejudice is not the norm. Suspicion, dislike, jealousy, scapegoating — none of those are the transcendent facet of the human personality. They're diseases. They are the cancers of the soul," Van Dyke said, as he read an excerpt from Sterling's "A Most Non-Political Speech."
"They are the infectious and contagious viruses that have bled humanity over the years. But because they have been and are, is it necessary that they shall be? I think not," he added.
"If there is one voice left to say 'welcome' to a stranger, if there is but one hand outstretched to say 'enter and share,' if there is but one mind remaining to think a thought of warmth and friendship, then there is also a future in which we will find more than one hand, more than one voice, and more than one mind dedicated to the cause of man’s equality," the Emmy Award-winner continued.
"To those who tell us that the inequality of the human animal is a necessary evil, we must respond by simply saying that first, it is evil but not necessary," Van Dyke said, reading Sterling's words.
While Van Dyke didn't name former President Trump in his endorsement of Harris, he criticized the ex-commander in chief in June, calling him "disturbed."
"I'm very, very worried," Van Dyke said at the time of his thoughts on the state of the world.
Concluding his pre-Election Day video, the nonagenarian said, "1964 — a lot's happened."
"Not so much as Martin Luther dreamed of," Van Dyke said, "but it's a start."
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