I Thank GOD For Spike Lee

As I am apt to do on a lazy day, I did some major reading today.

Today's (really tomorrow's) edition of The New York Observer has a cover story on Spike Lee. It's a must read.

Must.

I've included an excerpt...

"I don't think the last eight years have been a good moment in our history, under this President and administration," he said. "There are people down there six months later who are still in despair. They still don't have a home. They're still waiting for FEMA." He paused. "That should be a playWaiting for FEMA! Down there, FEMA is a dirty word.

 

"Before Katrina, New Orleans was 80 percent African-American," he continued. "What's it going to be like when the majority of its black citizens have spread outgiven one-way tickets, I might add. Can you imagine? Those people got on those planes, when they were being evacuated and they weren't told where they were going. So you get on a plane and fall asleepand your black ass is waking up in motherfucking Anchorage, Alaska!"

Last October, he tussled with Tucker Carlson ("the guy in the bow tie") on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher when Mr. Lee said he'd be including in his documentary the conspiracy theory that it was the U.S. government who bombed the levees.

 

"Here's the thing," he said. "Even today, a large part of the African-American community of New Orleans thinks that those levees were bombed. Now, whether that is true or not, that should not be discounted." He rattled off past government trespasses: 1927's Great Flood of Mississippi, when the levees were, in fact, blown up; the flooding of the Ninth Ward during Hurricane Betsy in 1965; the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.

 

"So, in the collective mind of African-Americans, it is not some science-fiction, hocus-pocus thing to say that the government is doing stuff," he continued. "Even if it didn't happen, you cannot discount it and dismiss it as Oh you people are crazy. It's what people thinktalk to Jewish people. Because of the Holocaust, you know, anything that happens, it's like, 'Oh! It's starting again.' And I'm not going to fault someone of Jewish ancestry that feels like that because that happened! This is history.

 

His voice grew louder. "No one is saying to Jewish people, 'Oh, you're crazy!' So if you use the same analogy, then it's not so farfetched. It is my duty as a filmmaker to let them give their opinions, and there are people who will swear on a stack of bibles that they heard an explosion down there."

 

Would he be shocked if it turned out to be true? "No. No, I would not," he said.

Read the entire article online in the New York Observer.

I will go out on a limb and say this.

The gubment did 9/11.
The gubment bombed the levees.
The gubment is probably funding Brokeback Mountain II: Rodeo Style.