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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Does Spike Lee Hate Italians? Film director Spike Lee likes to dish out his opinion about race, but doesn't like to take it from whites. Lee, whose whole body of work shows an obsession with race, portraying whites as the "bad guys" and blacks as persecuted innocents, most recently attacked actor/director Clint Eastwood because Eastwood's film, "Flags of Our Fathers," dealing with the heroic Battle of Iwo Jima, did not focus on a small number of black support personnel present at the epic conflict central to the War in the Pacific. Bill Dal Cerro, president of the Italic Institute of America, sees a double standard with the sanctimonious pronouncements of Lee, many of whose projects have scapegoated Italian Americans, especially, as troglodyte racists, the worst of the whites Lee routinely castigates. "Spike Lee is talented, but I sometimes wish he'd practice what he preaches," said Dal Cerro. "His points about African-Americans are well taken, but, ironically, he does the same thing to Italians in his films." Spike Lee's latest film is "Miracle at St. Anna," about a black US Army unit involved in the Allied invasion of Italy. Black soldiers were feared all across Europe for their rape of white women and other criminal behavior during and following the Second World War. Black (and, increasingly, Hispanic) military crime, especially rape, continues to be routine in such US imperial outposts as Okinawa, leading to repeated pleas for US occupaation withdrawal. While the crew involved in Lee's "St. Anna" "miracle" haven't been accused of such actions, the film is seen by some Italians as yet another attack on the Italian people from Lee, whose apparent hatred of Italians stems from his experiences in New York City, a place where blacks and other nonwhites routinely conflict with Italian Americans, the city's strongest surviving white ethnic group. Lee's attack on Eastwood was seen as not only an attempt to push interest in his "Miracle at St. Anna" picture, but an expression of his overall dislike of whites. In blasting Eastwood, Lee said: "There were many African-Americans who survived that war and who were upset at Clint for not having one [in the film]. That was his version: the negro soldier did not exist. I have a different version. These African-American men wanted to fight against fascism in the name of democracy. At the same time, they were still second-class citizens." Lee's outburst, which came at the Cannes film festival, was blamed for blanking all awards for Eastwood's film from a panel afraid of offending racially correct norms. Eastwood responded appropriately, saying that Spike Lee should "shut his face." Refreshingly, Eastwood pointed out that "the story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and [blacks] didn't do that.If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people'd go: 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate." Up until the Vietnam War, blacks were mainly spared frontline combat duty, a just policy considering that America was explicitly considered to be a white nation until that disastrous period. Typically, once blacks were granted the honor of serving America in combat, they now complain that they have been over represented in casualties, an urban legend that still persists in the present war in Iraq. As a caller from European Americans United informed an Air America hostess and her national audience, lower income blue collar and rural white males carry the overwhelming burden of battlefield deaths and injuries in this war, as in all other US conflicts. Eastwood's concerns about accuracy are welcome, especially considering the violence done to history by Hollywood. Hollywood often seeks to condition viewers to totally inaccurate historical images. The infamous "Kingdom of Heaven," a film about the Crusades, made the historical European traitors into heroes, the heroes into narrow minded racist murderers, the Muslims into "We Are the World" tolerance mongers, and portrayed an obvious American black as a mailclad knight. "Kingdom of Heaven" added a "romantic" subplot that twisted the relational dynamics of the Middle Ages: the erstwhile Queen of Jerusalem, overtaken with passion for her traitor boyfriend and a new understanding about tolerance, renounces her title and takes up life with her lover, a village blacksmith! Oliver Stone's "Alexander" made Alexander the Great's wife, Roxanna, into a hybrid mulatta, while "300," the epic film about the world historic Spartan sacrifice at Thermopylae, transformed the Achaemenid Persian King Xerxes into a transsexual piloting an army of blacks and, best of all, Japanese ninjas (of all things). Spike Lee responded to Eastwood's advice to "shut his face" with the petulance of nonwhites who see white generosity as weakness. "We're not on a plantation," Lee spat, the same kind of response expected from blacks whose main strength is their protected racial status. Meanwhile, along with "rednecks," Poles and white people in general, Italians are one of the few ethnic groups that it is stilll politically correct to attack, abuse and demean. Italians are regularly portrayed as gangsters, uncouth sexists and violent racists. In the notorious HBO program "The Sopranos," protagonist Tony Soprano was sympathetically portrayed, despite his multiple murders, drug dealing, extortion, drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, terrorization of his family, adultery and other "moblike behavior." But when his daughter brought home a black guy, Tony Soprano became utterly evil, a wild hatemonger who, on top of his "excusable" crimes, also wanted to preserve his genetic legacy. From there on out Tony sank like a rock, beating his own inlaws and otherwise carrying on until, in the final episode, he committed the final sin, harming a Jewish character. Clearly, the social engineering America has been experiencing for three decades isn't about equality. Largely it's about displacing white people. People like Spike Lee understand this and capitalize on it. The situation won't improve until white people speak with a unified voice.
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#1. To: X-15 (#0)
you go, Clint.
Sometimes it is what it is..... survival needs no apology.
Unquestionably, if "Do the Right Thing" and "Jungle Fever" are any indication. Lee is all about tribe. He cannot see beyond it. In his world there are no nuances in human relationships. He is not "thought provoking"; he's as shallow as the kiddie pool.
Barry Obama -- In your heart, you know he's wrong.
Emmit Till, the 14-year-old black teenager who was supposedly lynched for whistling at a white woman, actually made lewd sexual comments to her, put his hands on her, and prevented her from getting past himn. Turned out his father had been hanged in Italy by the U.S. military for murdering three Italian women and raping two of them. Looked like the POS son didn't fall far from the father's tree. At 14, had he had not been killed, he would have ended up raping and murdering women, just like his father.
It is impossible to decutify me.
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