Holly told you about Spike’s little snit over the lack of African-American representation in Clint Eastwood’s WWII movie Flags of Our Fathers, and Eastwood’s response: “A guy like him should shut his face.” (It’s no “Go ahead, make my day,” but it’ll do.) On June 6, Spike told ABCNEWS.com:
“First of all, the man is not my father and we’re not on a plantation either. He’s a great director. He makes his films, I make my films. The thing about it though, I didn’t personally attack him. And a comment like ‘a guy like that should shut his face’ — come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there.”
But sometime that same day, he told MTV News:
“I’m going to take the Obama high road,” the filmmaker said, refusing to trade any more barbs with Eastwood or elaborate any more over perceived inaccuracies in the recent “Flags of Our Fathers.” “It’s not a feud.”
Maybe I’m being too nitpicky, but calling somebody an “angry old man” and comparing him to a plantation owner doesn’t sound like taking the high road, Obama’s or otherwise. Sounds like Spike’s so used to shooting his mouth off that he can’t keep his ill-considered remarks straight from one day to the next. Or even the same day!
This is a battle between Class and Crass. As far as I am concerned, I know that class won anytime in those cases. I am always amazed how those who pull the race card are so ready to dwell into the worst of the slavery era. do they have no shame at all?
It isn’t taking the high road, but if anyone calls him on it, he will say that they are racist.
He is of the same ilk as Jesse, Al, Wright etc…so dependant on keeping the divisions of race alive to save their own careers. These losers cannot afford to see racial harmony exist as their existence starts to fade. They will never go away as long as the Democrats need them.
However, I don’t believe that telling anyone to “Shut your face” is exactly classy either. They would be better served if they got together over a beer and talked about it. That would be the classy thing to do.
Sorry,
But this entire post is wrong on every conceivable level.
First: It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out what percentage of American forces in the Pacific were white, black, hispanic, etc. Did Eastwood’s film come anywhere near reality, or not? There is an answer, and the film did, or it didn’t.
Second: Whatever you think of Spike, he has a right, like anyone else to ask whether Eastwood tried to be anywhere near historically accurate, or make another “White Christmas.”
Third: Eastwood’s reaction, “he should shut his face,” leads me to think he might have something to lose here, and that the old man has forgotten what country we live in, and what freedoms we like to dream we have.
Fourth: The differences between what Spike allegedly said out of “each side of his face” are not worth posting whatsoever. The previous replies read like typical undereducated American drivel.
C’mon, people! We’ve got the WORST, two-faced, eee-VIL president and vice-prez in the history of this country, dragging us over the cliff of no return, and you want to waste time on this malarkey???
Sad days indeed…
Note: This comment was almost as long as my post.
This is fundamentally – well, dumb. ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ wasn’t about ‘American forces in the Pacific” in general, it was about the group of men who raised the flag on Mt. Suribachi. Were any of them African-American? No. Were there African-American combat soldiers on Iwo Jima whom the subject of the film would have interacted with? No. The only African-Americans on Iwo Jima, in the segregated U.S. Army, were ammunition loaders in a service battalion. They did their duty , did it well, and a number were killed, either from enemy fire or in accidents. But they were not part of the action in the story Clint Eastwood wanted to tell. For him to distort history to include them would have been check-the-box racism. Which – my opinion – is exactly what Spike Lee wanted.
You’re still on Bush/Cheney?
First: You didn’t answer the question. Come to think of it you didn’t ask one.
Second: “White Christmas”? You mean the musical or the term that generates from snow falling? I haven’t seen black snow.
Third: “the old man has forgotten what country we live in” No age discrimination there. Preparing for the Obama v. McCain campaign?
Fourth: Your reply reads like someone who’s no better than the rest of us but thinks he is.
I agree, sad days indeed …
Spike Lee is an idiot, and falls for any urban legend as long as it blames whitey and involves racism against blacks. BTW Spike Lee asserts blacks cannot be racists. Yeah, whatever!
One Urban Legend that has been popular for about the last 10 years is that Liz Claiborne is a racist, and that she had appeared on Oprah Winfrey. Oprah had asked her to leave because she had said that she, “didn’t make clothes for black women.” This Urban Legend was even quoted by Spike Lee in an interview he did in the mid-90’s. The problem is that the whole story was false. Liz Claiborne never appeared on Oprah, she never said that and was never “kicked off the set.”
To AWA… if you feel that this post was such a waste of time, and you are so concerned over the two faced president, then perhaps you are on the wrong website and should seek out something more politically inclined.
Furthermore, Spike Lee has a history of thinly veiled racism. But it’s okay for black people to be racist, right? When a white person is racist, they are demonized (and rightfully so). Well, it works both ways, and his whining and wish to revise history is as racist as a white person donning the white bedsheets. Racism is ugly no matter who it comes from. As someone else posted, he thrives on racial division because it’s good for his career and keeps him relevant. Quite frankly, I find that pretty sick.
yep i think this spike lee is just like al sharpton and jesse jackson.
Evil? No bringing higher taxes, socialized medicine and a bigger victim mentality to the country would be evil. Old Dubya did sell out conservativism but to elect the polar opposite makes about as much sense as cutting off one’s nose to pspite your face.
Isn’t not voting for someone because of the color of their skin about as racist as voting for that person for the same reason alone?
When people use the race card to make a point, it actually makes the ‘rest of us’ numb to what they’re saying. I personally take the point less seriously.
It’s like calling someone a Nazi, you’re be-littling a tragic event by using the term lightly and in everyday candor.
…and yes I went there
Clint Eastwood could eat babies and I would still adore him, hes CLINT friggin EASTWOOD!
Man you skip a day, and look at all the cool stuff you miss.
“…Spike Lee has a history of thinly veiled racism.”
There is nothing even remotely veiled about his racism.
True enough, Amy. True enough.
Chronic Malanga–
I get what you’re saying, and agree with most of your point, but I don’t think whining about a movie is really the same as “donning the white sheets”. Super misinformed (if that’s really the case, i have no idea), definitely. But the Klan was a really violent group. Actually violent. Spike Lee drives me nuts, but I don’t think he’s actually a violent person. And if I were to complain about something I saw as wrong (no matter how ignorant), someone saying that I’m as bad as the people who killed and committed actual violence in the areas where my parents were raised is incredibly inappropriate. (Like whoever said the thing about the nazis, it trivializes actual tragedies.) My two cents.
Seriously… point well taken, but look at it this way. Don’t you think that someone like Spike Lee, who makes it a point to spread hate, isn’t basically giving violent acts a nod? No, he himself hasn’t gone out there to physically “get whitey”, but someone that believes his crap might well take those sentiments a step further. He’s not setting the best example and while I am all for a person who commits an act of violence taking full responsibility for it (i.e. Ozzy, a bad childhood, or a video game are not at fault), an impressionable kid that looks up to him as a community leader is more likely to jump the white kid in the school parking lot than say… someone that looks up to Martin Luther King, Jr.
For all his protestations, Spike would have never been satisfied by the inclusion of blacks in Flags. Any blacks seen in the final cut would have been too few in number and/or tokenism.
The fact is, and WAY too few people care to admit it, there is a group of blacks in this country for whom the very notion of integration and equality is an anathema to their way of thinking. They look upon blacks and whites living side by side peacefully as “selling out”, or a betrayal of “black pride”. Their motto is “The only good white person is one I can point to as a racist!”.
Spike Lee is the Quintessential black kid raised in a predominately white suburb who thinks he has to over compensate to be true to his race. Problem is no one has told him that he is seen as a joke by so many people.
I think we found Obamas running mate
You guys, esp the one that posted this crap are a bunch of tards..
Any Dumb Ass who starts off crying about the Al Sharptons, and Jesse Jacksons is a racist Tard.
Period. Enough Said.
You dont know what you are talking about.
Al Sharptons, and Jesse Jacksons are not dangerous, they are fighting for dignity.
The only ones that need fear the Jessie’s and Sharpton’s are the cracker ass idiots, that populate these pages.
My friend recently kicked the s*** out off 6 whitefrat boys, screaming n*****, who tried to jump him. He did it with his hands, and those racists deserved it, and they’ll be wearing fake teeth the rest of there lives.
You dumb f***s better watch out, cause the next scared “ethnic” you corner to abuse, might just know what to do with your f** ass faces.
BTW, I love all Clint Eastwood movies,
and Spike Lee Movies.
((also Akira Kurosawas Samurai Flicks, which many of the old westerns are based off of.))
(((and Terri Gilliam and the Coen Brothers)))
HAve any of you dumb s***s even watched a spike lee movie??, he’s great because, his depiction of the race war isn’t one sided, because he shows the flaws and humans on both sides.
Trolls are people too.
No sweat Whiter than thou. The only “ethnic” I’m cornering later is a bottle of Irish whiskey. And I bet it does kick my ass.
P.S. All but two or three Terry Gilliam movies are terrible.
Trolls live indeed. Considering I am about as mixed as it gets, including but not limited to white, black, American Indian, and Chinese, I don’t think I have any room to be racist. I just call ‘em like I see ‘em, and Lee, Sharpton, and Jackson are a bunch of racists, simple as that.
Wow. That is a lot of stuff Chronic. That’s more than Obama. He’s just a Halfrican-American. So that makes you what, a WhackAmIndese?
Whiter, anyone that includes Al Sharpton in the same sentence as the word dignity has lost any for of credibility with me. His career was built on a lie, Tawana Brawley, and he has done nothing to redeem himself. He makes money off the same people he purports to defend then blasts the white media and government for taking advantage of black people.
For the record I have watched some of the crap spikey puts out, 10 year olds could direct better than he could.
Dude, Pasta, I don’t even know what I am other than “Carribean Mix”. The more I find out with my family research, the more there is to add.
And if I ever have kids, they’ll be able to add my husband’s British/South African Dutch/German into the mix. I’m like… a true mutt.