Read the first intallment here.

Ron Kuby likes Al Sharpton.

In fact, on one wall of his office there’s a copy of Sharpton’s book “Go and Tell Pharoah” tacked up.

This is not to say that his feelings for the portly Reverend are unreserved. “I don’t even agree with everything Fidel does,” Kuby explains, taking in vain the name of one of his most beloved idols.

The combination of irony and left-wing religious faith, I discovered, are two of Kuby’s most salient personal characteristics. The humor is something ever present with Kuby and a reason why it’s hard to spend time with him and not be at least a little bit charmed.

Some time before I met him, Kuby had lost a court fight with the widow of his long-time partner William Kunstler over ownership of the firm’s valuable files. Kuby’s defeat in the case had resulted from his lack of any written document giving him an equal share in the firm’s assets, notwithstanding Kunstler’s continual public and private acknowledgement of their partnership.

About this Kuby told me, smiling painfully: “He who lives by the technicality dies by the technicality.”

Similarly, when I asked Kuby why he had consented to my interviewing him, he explained his belief in the necessity of open discourse between people of different political beliefs, and then said about his WABC radio talk show: “Of course, I don’t want [Disney Chairman Michael] Eisner to know I work for him.”

Moreover, that belief in free speech that he claims to hold appears to be sincere. He mentions, for example, that he protested the firing of his right-wing WABC talk show colleague Bob Grant.

And if you consider having faith to be a clear-cut sign of character, than Kuby must have no small amount of character. Because his beliefs are definitely not based on reason —something which I discovered to my astonishment that he actually knew about himself.

This is not to say that Kuby is a man of absolutely blind faith. He does admit that life in Cuba is not better than here. But he maintains that the source of U.S. wealth is “slavery and ripping off the Third World.” (Not explained, of course, is why the parts of the U.S. that had slavery were the poorest ones or how the U.S.’s relatively minimal levels of trade and substantial largesse to impoverished countries could be the source of their continued struggles.)

“Cuba is a paradise compared with Guatemala,” he says. “And I really believe that if all the countries of the world were socialist, then paradise might be possible.”

Hasn’t every country in which Communist been tried had political executions, autocracy and economic stagnation?

This question forces Kuby to stop and look away from me. This is a serious matter.

“Well,” he responds, “Christianity has existed for two thousand years and they haven’t created paradise on earth. Should we throw Christianity out then? Marxism has only been around for a hundred and fifty years, more or less. So we haven’t created paradise yet…”

But, isn’t that an argument against Christianity and for a religious faith in Marxism, rather than a logical argument for Marxism?

“Yes,” Kuby says, “it’s true. And when I get depressed — when I get down - I cling to it. I cling to that line like Christians cling to Christ’s vision.”