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Tyler Perry Is "So Sick Of Hearing About Damn Spike Lee"
By
Jen Carlson
Published Apr 20, 2011
Modified Apr 20, 2011
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Apr 20, 2011
Modified Apr 20, 2011
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At a press junket for his latest cinematic masterpiece, Madea’s Big Happy Family, Tyler Perry decided to take Spike Lee down a notch. Lee has constantly criticized the director for pandering to stereotypes in his movies, here's a clip from 2009 of him doing just that:
Perry has sort of expressed anger over Lee publicly calling him in the past, but now according to the Wall Street Journal he's finally fully lashed out on Lee in a public forum. He declared:
“I’m so sick of hearing about damn Spike Lee. Spike can go straight to hell! You can print that. I am sick of him talking about me, I am sick of him saying, ‘this is a coon, this is a buffoon.’ I am sick of him—he talked about Whoopi, he talked about Oprah, he talked about me, he talked about Clint Eastwood. Spike needs to shut the hell up!” He believes Lee, and some other critics, are trying "to get this mob mentality to come against what I’m doing. I’ve never seen Jewish people attack Seinfeld and say ‘this is a stereotype,’ I’ve never seen Italian people attack The Sopranos, I’ve never seen Jewish people complaining about Mrs. Doubtfire or Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie. I never saw it. It’s always black people, and this is something that I cannot undo. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois went through the exact same thing."
To be fair, Italians (and now all of Italy) have criticized Jersey Shore and its cast for the whole guido thing. And is it all just white noise now that Lee has criticized pretty much everyone? He even generalized himself and called all journalists lazy! (Maybe that's why he's so mean during interviews.) Needless to say, it's sort of surprisingly hard to pick a side here...
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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