MLK Day: Hillary's "plantation," Eliot and Tom

I should have known I wouldn't be able resist a short post on the Harlem political festivities today, first at a freezing 1199 rally, and then at the cozy Canaan Baptist Church, where Al Sharpton holds court.

Hillary, speaking at Canaan (and keeping a good distance between herself and fellow guest Harry Belafonte) seemed to get a bit carried away by the day's rhetoric, veering after a strong but safe passage abouit New Orleans, into a charged simile:

"When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation," she said. "And you know what I'm talking about."

The audience loved it, as did the press corps clustered in back.

Also uptown today, Spitzer and Suozzi jostled a bit, with Suozzi wowing the 1199 crowd by leading the rally in song and then performing an open-air signing of a living-wage bill, as Eliot found himself forced into the background. Later, Suozzi took a beating from Acorn's Bertha Lewis on the issue of housing, while Eliot ducked the question of clemency for jailed Black Panthers.

He was followed by Harry Belafonte who -- as Sharpton noted, and for all the Caracas controversy -- backed Martin Luther King before it was a bipartisan necessity.