Good example of something that's not a good example of anything. Just a spat between ho-hum celebrities. It ranks right up there with Sharon Stone vs. China. Is this tnr.com or tmz.com?

Foug: the debate (such as it is) is about the sources of artistic inspiration and methods of artistic expression - if analysed properly, rather than voyeuristically, this can be a great topic of discussion, and a timely distraction from the election/primary ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZs.  I suggest, however, that TNR should bump this over to Chris Orr or Stanley Kaufman.

Foug is right, The Plank should never deviate from it's time honored mission of "all primary, all the time."  

I believe that Isaac also occasionally covers the Hollywood beat for TNR.

Shouldn't this  be on the entertainment tonight website?

Were there black soldiers at Iwo Jima?  If not, Clint is right.  If yes, than Spike is right.  

"Eastwood responded by saying that the people who raised the flag over Iwo Jima (the subject of Flags) were all white"

What about Ira Hayes? He was a Pima Indian played by an actor of First nation descent in Eastwood's movie.

I don't know if there were black soilders at Iwo Jima, but the units were segregated so there wouldn't have been a lot of inter action

The Mandela riposte by Clint Eastwood is quite funny. Spike Lee is a talented director but he does make terrible remarks on race at times.

alexmh:  exactly, given the currency of the Hayes story and its long history (LaFarge's "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" is from the early 1960s?), it seems a bit clueless of Clint to use the phrase "all white."

I was going to nix the urge to say, "Get over the race shit oh ever vigilant soul sweepers.." But then I thought how useful it will be in the future for this, " find a racist behind every tree' thing will be. Can't wait till we get there boys and girls. Won't that be a little bit like heaven on earth?

Perhaps Barack can make it part of a platform to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I'm sure the American people will take heart and rally the to the cause of such a wonderful promise.

Somehow I suspect he won't go that route.

I think Spike is right here.

There are Black Folks everywhere and to imply they weren't in the Army at Iwo Jima is crazy.  They do the jobs no one else does, like munitions.  

Yes Clint is right, they didn't raise the flag, but it doesn't mean they weren't clearing mines, digging graves or cooking.

But you can't question Clint.  Five Oscars, a boatload of great movies and all those hot chicks.  He even got out of alimony with Sandra Lockhart because she was still married while she slept with him.

But Spike has to give up the Plantation crap.  Not helping the cause with that stuff.

This is hardly a subject for debate since it can so easily be cleared up.  There are military records that would show if there were black units on Iwo Jima, if they were infantry units or support (although either way, very much in harms way)  And whether they were integrated into white units (I can almost guarantee they were not).

This is purely anectdotal, and it may only prove that photographers or their editors discriminated, but I have never seen a photograph of a black man in a WW2 amphibious landing either in the Pacific or Europe.

But, in any event, the military most certainly kept racial records.  Our government still does in every sphere.  So, a little digging into the archives by anyone accustomed to military research, would solve this quickly.

I'm surprised that no journalist has bothered.

OK, CRS( and the rest, Time Magazine did some research and here is their answer.  I'm not sure if it is definitive, but it sounds pretty credible:

//www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1812972,00.html?imw=Y

History, as it turns out, is on both their sides. Lee is correct that African-Americans played an instrumental role in World War II, in which more than 1 million black servicemen helped defeat the Axis Powers. Those efforts include significant contributions to the fight for Iwo Jima. An estimated 700 to 900 African-American soldiers participated in the epic island battle, many of whom were Marines trained in segregated boot camps at Montford Point, within Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

Those soldiers were restricted from front-line combat duty, but they played integral noncombat roles. Under enemy fire, they piloted amphibious truck units during perilous shore landings, unloaded and shuttled ammunition to the front lines, helped bury the dead, and weathered Japanese onslaughts on their positions even after the island had been declared secure. According to Christopher Moore, the author of a book about African-Americans' myriad contributions during World War II, "thousands" more helped fashion the airstrips from which U.S. B-29 aircrafts could launch and return from air assaults on Tokyo, about 760 miles northwest. Hosting that air base, Moore says, was Iwo Jima's primary strategic importance.

Eastwood's portrayal of the specific battle is, if narrow, also essentially accurate. Flags Of Our Fathers zeroes in on the soldiers who hoisted the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi, and this task, memorialized in a famous staged photograph, was accomplished by five white servicemen and a sixth, Ira Hayes, of Pima Indian descent. (His other entry in the Iwo Jima category, Letters from Iwo Jima, is told largely from the perspective of Japanese soldiers.)

Eastwood is also correct that black soldiers represented a small fraction of the total force deployed on the island. That argument doesn't placate Yvonne Latty, a New York University professor and author of a book about African-American veterans. Black soldiers "had the most dangerous job," she says. "If you were going to show the soldiers' landing, you'd need to show [African-Americans] on the beach." In Flags of Our Fathers, which shows the landing in significant detail, African-Americans appear only in fleeting cutaway shots and in a photograph during the film's closing credits.

Moore lauds Eastwood's rendering of the battle, but laments the limited role accorded to African-Americans. "Without black labor," he says, "we would've seen a much different ending to the war."

Channy,

Thanks for looking into this.  Good work.

Spike and Clint are two strong personalities and you have to pick one of the other.  

I loved Carmel by the Sea when I was there and ate at Clint's restaurant.  Dirty Harry is in my top 10.  But sometimes even Demi-Gods are wrong.

Enjoy.