Clint's a Durty Librul! No, He's a Bigot!
MORE than 50 years after he first appeared in Hollywood as a bright young Republican, Clint Eastwood has been attacked by his old allies as a bleeding heart liberal for his latest film, Flags of Our Fathers.
Wha ... ? There's a bleeding-heart agenda in Flags of Our Fathers? More from Down Under:
While most American critics have praised the film, calling it the best war film since Saving Private Ryan, others have protested against a supposedly liberal bias in the script.
Scott Holleran, writing for Box Office Mojo, said: "Flags unfolds as though it discovers something awful about the United States, making the middle classes look idiotic and racist and suggesting the nation that defeated Japan did so purely by accident."
William Bemister, a radio commentator, said he felt that Eastwood, formerly a close ally of former president Ronald Reagan, had turned in recent years from "the Man with No Name to the Man with the Bleeding Heart".
But the British Guardian begs to differ -- Eastwood ain't no durty librul, he's actually a racist himself:
"Of all the movies that have been made of Iwo Jima, you never see a black face," said [veteran U.S. Marine sergeant Thomas] McPhatter. "This is the last straw. I feel like I've been denied, I've been insulted, I've been mistreated. But what can you do? We still have a strong underlying force in my country of rabid racism."
... [Roland Durden, another black marine], too, is wearied but unsurprised at the omissions in Eastwood's film. "We're always left out of the films, from John Wayne on," he said. Mr Durden ascribes to both the conspiracy as well as the cock-up theory of history. "They didn't want blacks to be heroes. This was pre-1945, pre-civil rights."
I'm no big fan of Flags [my review], but I'll give Eastwood this: If you're pissing off everyone, then you've probably done something right.
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MaryAnn Johanson
minder of FlickFilosopher.com
