Can Spike Leeave well enough alone?

After seeing some story repeatedly over the past several days about some meaningless tiff between Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood regarding a perceived dearth of diversity in Eastwood's new film Flags of our Fathers I have to ask: Are you kidding me?

Spike clearly suffers from publicity withdrawal from time to time, and becomes willing to use whatever means necessary to obtain his fix: Even if that means perpetuating racist ideologies, or suing to try and prevent others from using the name "Spike". I suppose when his manufactured controversies involve the perpetuation of racism it isn't really much of a surprise; since every time he stirs up a racial controversy people start paying attention to him again. Personally I just want it (and, perhaps, him) to go away. Many people just want to see racism finally die out, but it will take far longer than it should so long as some people keep it on life support for the advancement of their personal agendas or personal ambitions. I won't reward those that support Spike's publicity addiction by linking to their articles, and that's why there are no links to be found in this post.

As for Spike's latest race-related criticism publicity stunt: A quick and painless 5 minutes of web-based research reveals that the percentage of black soldiers among deployments to Iwo Jima during World War II was never more than 8%, and was often far less than that. I suppose Spike was offended wasn't satisfied, then, to see diversity of skin tone flash by only briefly in the form of an extra or two in the background? Or perhaps a photograph at the end? Who's to say that guy with a distinctive tan over there didn't cover things just fine by himself? Does Spike Lee not care about brown people?

It's sad that the man seems to see things in black and white when shades of gray are probably more appropriate. It's clear, though, that representation is very important to Spike Lee--regardless of how small the currently-measured sample size may be of those being represented. I hope we'll soon hear that he hasn't let his Obama t-shirt get in the way of him speaking out again on this important issue by condemning the consistent exclusion of third party presidential candidates from the presidential debates.

Or maybe he'll just take Clint's advice and "Shut his face" after all.