Christina’s Common Sense

In today’s world, everyone wants to be a victim. It’s the cool thing to do, especially if you’re gay, black, or a woman. If you’re all three, it’s even cooler. But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about history becoming subordinate to victimology.

Spike Lee (black guy, film director, victim extraordinaire, and Yankees fan to add insult to injury), has recently taken issue with Clint Eastwood (white guy, film director, and conservative) for not putting any black guys in his 2006 blockbusters Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima.

Lee might have a legitimate case had there been black guys on Iwo Jima. Having spent most of the spring semester researching this epic battle, I can attest that I did not run across a single book, chapter, paragraph, sentence, or footnote addressing black Marines on the island. The military was segregated in 1945, so to have blacks and whites fighting alongside each other would have been a big fat deal. Would nobody have written about it? Would those books nobody has written not be unbelievably famous? They would, because back then it would have been unprecedented. The lack of documentation is, to my mind, proof that no black men fought in this battle. That’s not racism. It’s just the truth (which, of course, is racism these days).

If you think that’s laughable, let’s address Lee’s beef with Letters from Iwo Jima, which recounts Iwo from the Japanese’s end. Do I really need to say anything here? The Japanese are the most homogeneous population on the face of the earth. What does Spike Lee want to do, dress a bunch of Kobe Bryant lookalikes in Imperial Japanese battle garb and try to pass them off as authentic Japanese men?

What’s next? Should we alter the famous photograph (over this Marine lover’s dead body) to show a few women raising the flag? Let’s Photoshop a ponytail onto Harlon Block’s head! That’ll make the professional victims happy! Hey, how about a Japanese guy jumping out of his bunker to help the Americans stick the flag on Mt. Suribachi? Then we can be really fair to everyone.

Spike Lee is revealing himself and those who agree with him to be horses’ derrieres. However, he may shut up and retreat back to his millions of dollars soon enough—the Italic Institute of America has accused him of being anti-Italian.