LEATHERNECKM31

Color-coding history

Okay. This is right in my wheelhouse.

Spike Lee, the director who seems to make only cache "black films" which do little business but are loved by guilt-ridden white critics, can't generate headlines with his work so the other day he called Clint Eastwood a "racist."

Lee couldn't carry Clint's .44 magnum... it weighs more than he does.

Lee attacked Clint because his two films--"Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima" didn't give a co-starring role to the black Marines who served in non-combat units on the "sulphur island".

"He did two films about Iwo Jima back to back and there was not one black soldier in both of those films," Lee said Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival.

"Soldier"? I thought we were talking about Marines.

(And of course, he's wrong anyway, one of the Lee trademarks: One of Eastwood's co-producers, Robert Lorenz  had to explain to Lee that 12 black extras were used in the landing scenes. "They are there in this film ... but the focus of this film is the story of the flag raisers. This film is very much about racism and the treatment of Ira Hayes, the Native American flag raiser.")

Yeah, Hayes had it tough as a Pima Indian in the Corps at that time, but it didn't dominate what I thought was a very flawed movie anyway.

Some historical facts:

There were some 700 black Marines on Iwo in non-combat roles---if there was such a designation on the hellish island. There primary tasks included running ammunition to the front lines, burying the dead, and unloading the amphibian crafts at the waters edge. My guess is that there were thousands of Puerto Rican, and even Brooklyn and New Jersey Marines who performed the same and similar tasks.

Guess what, Spike...? Eastwood didn't feature them in either movie.

Guess what #2.... in neither of Eastwood's Iwo movies (one from the perspective of the six Marines who raised the flag on Suribachi and the other from the perspective of THE JAPANESE) did not feature any black Marines.

Why...? Because they were not assigned to combat units; to portray them as such would have stood history on its head. I have no doubt, however, that in some future movie about Iwo, a black, a Hispanic and a woman will take the places of three of the flag raisers on Suribachi... "... calling Mr. Stone, Mr. Oliver Stone."

You want a documentary on Iwo featuring black Marines in all disproportion to their actual role, Spike...? call Ken Burns. (BTW: And just look how unfairly even the libs' favorite documentarian was treated on his last outing. See here.)

By the way, where's the Spike Lee movie about black Marines or any Marines for that matter, on Iwo?

Wait for it....

Someone with half a brain might just suspect that Lee is such an insignificant little dipwad that he slandered Eastwood solely for the purpose of grabbing ink for his new movie, "Miracle at St. Anna", about four members of the 92nd "Buffalo Soldier" Infantry Division in Italy during WWII.

Lastly, you know who was left out of "Flags and "Letters"?

The 27 Marine Corps and Navy Medal of Honor Recipients, that's who; if anyone has a bitch coming about Eastwood's Iwo movie it's Marines Herschel "Woody" Williams and Jack Lucas, and Navy Corpsman George Wahlen--our three surviving Iwo Recipients. There was not even a passing reference to any Recipient; in fact, "Flags" was almost devoid of any American heroism.

The single most decorated battle in history, one-quarter of all Medals of Honor earned by Marines in the entire war, the bloodiest, most costly fight in Marine Corps history... and no heroes?

So come to think of it, if anybody has a bitch about Eastwood's movie, it's Iwo vets, black and white, the Marine Corps and all Marines.

Attack of the Hypocrites

Just as Tim Robbins predicted, a “chill wind” is blowing in Hollywood… but it’s blowing in Mel Gibson’s face.

Some of the Gomorrah-by-the-Sea moguls have stated that they will never hire or work with Gibson in the future because of his self-financed film, “The Passion of The Christ.”

“Blacklisting”--the bleating battle cry of the Left for 50 years--is in fact practiced by… uh-huh, The Left.

The rising tide against Gibson began with Braveheart. The criticism sniped at the moral center of the film--the central character’s resistance to oppression and his willingness to die for his beliefs. The same hypocrites who lavished praise on Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill Part I called Braveheart “gratuitously violent.” What did they think war with broadswords and arrows would look like?

Next, Gibson gave us The Patriot in which the central character (with Biblical foreshadowing) sacrifices one of his sons in the fight against brutal oppression. Worse… in avenging that murder, he puts guns in the hands of his surviving young sons who cut down as many Redcoats as they can. The usual pundits gathered their skirts about their knees and worried about “the message that sends” about guns and children.

Next, Gibson really offended with We Were Soldiers, a near-documentary film about young American’s heroism in Vietnam. The Hollywood Left (at least until John Kerry ran for president) ignored the truth of Vietnam, favoring instead, the portrayal of GIs as murderers, rapists, kooks and drug addicts… see: Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Born of the Fourth of July, Full Metal Jacket, and Casualties of War.

General Hal Moore and Joe Galloway who wrote We Were Soldiers… and Young turned down numerous movie offers before accepting Gibson’s. “We were determined that the truth be told,” Gen. Moore said.

Critics criticized Gibson for the “unbelievable” dialog in which a dying solder asks a comrade to tell his wife that he loved her. It wasn’t a line; it was actual uttered by a hero in the Ia Drang Valley.

Once more, Gibson’s theme of fidelity, faith and sacrifice--and of a devout “father’s” love for his “sons”--played through the film.

Simply, Gibson does not follow the approved Left politics of secular Hollywood and they hate him for it.

And now, he’s made a film which is clearly for him an article of faith… his faith… it is the story of Christianity.

For what it’s worth, the box-office receipts for Passion indicate that an overwhelmingly Christian society is interested in such films; it’s every bit as clear as the hypocrisy of the Hollywood.

loneliness of the long distance swimmer

Spaulding Gray may finally be completing his longest swim.... a gifted but tormented practitioner of one-man shows largely structured around his depression and his not-so-skewed vision of the world...

A friend remembers:

http://barlow.typepad.com/barlowfriendz/2004/01/
is_spalding_gra.html