Old griseled white man Clint Eastwood, or Perpetually cranky, Knicks floor seat season ticket holder, Spike Lee.
The two acclaimed directors started mouthing off to each other over Lee's comments that Eastwood failed to place a single black actor into either one of his recent World War Two epics "Flag of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima."
To this, Eastwood plainly called Lee "nuts" and told him to "Shut his face."
And to that... Lee explained to the media that Eastwood was not his father and they were currently not standing on a plantation.
See, why do some people have to take it to that level? I'm not just talking about blacks, I'm talking about everyone. Because everyone does it, even we white folks are just as guilty of pulling the (reverse) race card as a black guy, Asian lady, Mexican chulo, whatever.
Anytime there's a disagreement between two people of opposite skin color, one (usually whoever's on the losing side of things) will immdiately pull the race card and throw it down like an NFL ref with a yellow flag.
An example I had the pleasure to overhear a few years ago on a Manhattan-bound Q train:
"I don't know what you're talking about dude, she's not that hot," said a white guy to his black friend.
"Why don't you think she's hot? It's because she's black, right?" Said the black friend.
"Or.. it could be because she's fifty pounds overweight and has bad skin?"
"You're saying black skin is bad skin?"
"No, I'm saying that pock marks and flakes make bad skin..."
And yet, this poor white guy couldn't win! Everything he said was being bent back around to make him look like a racist. In public.
And that's a heavy weapon to be able to weild, because no one, black or white or yellow or brown or green, likes to be a racist. ...no wait, let me rephrase that: People don't like to be thought of as racist.
It's because individually, we all are racist and revel in it. I am, you are, your sister is, and most likely the girl behind the cash register at the GAP is too. We all pass judgement on people based on appearances alone.
Take that girl at the GAP register there. I bet she swipes at least 100 credit cards in her four hour shift. For however many she swipes that come back over their limit and rejected, I almost guarentee she thinks the card owner is a deadbeat scum bag.
I'll tell you this much: I've had credit cards turned down more than once, and it's a shitty feeling to have someone come back to you like "oh hey, do you have another card, this one's rejected." And when they say it, it feels like all the people in the place you're at all collectively took a breath at the same time, so everyone heard what was said to you. It doesn't make you a bad person, just slightly irresponsible.
But back to the subject of racism: Who's the bigger racist, Clint or Spike? Clint left out black people from two of his films (though I'm sure they were filled with plenty of fucking yellow-fisted nips), and told a celebrated black director to shut the fuck up. But Lee couldn't take being told by a man, like a man, to shut the fuck up and had to make the ordeal racial in nature. No one was even thinking about racism until Lee had to bring into the conversation a plantation. Then everyone saw it as a black/white thing. A struggle of oppressed power. Here's another black man being held down by an old white man, someone will think.
The real racist is the media. And I understand that's very cliche for me to say and blame, but it's true. They blew this whole thing so far out of proporting that it's almost dispicable. So what if a white guy who's won a crap ton of Oscars tells a revolutionary black director to shut up? Spike's comments were way out from left field in the first place. I'm sure there were many brave black soldiers on the island of Iwo Jima but the story wasn't about them. It was about... Marines raising a flag and fighting for America.
Being in the military, I know, that there's no such thing as color when your life is on the line. The only thing you're thinking about when shit hits the fan is if the guy next to you is qualified or not.
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2 comments:
African Americans didn't serve in the Marines until Korea and then very rarely. So there were no or very few African-Americans on Iwo Jima.
So Spike Lee is a idiot and also a big racist than any white director alive in Hollywood today as I seem to recall his movies have a lot of slurs and racist opinions concerning whites as well as other minorities.
Jake- there's a funny quote someplace that went something like "Yeah, that's as realistic as a white man's dialogue in a Spike Lee movie..."
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