Crazy Is As Crazy Does

There are times when I’m actually shocked by the lengths to which some people will go to attack liberals/progressives/anyone “left of center,” and this is one of those times. This inflammatory screed from Les Payne actually appeared last week, but it was picked up in a local-area paper a few days ago (and if you guessed that it was printed in The Bucks County Courier Times, then congratulations! You’ve just won a free “I Support My President, George W. Bush” bumper sticker – and yes, God help us, they actually DO exist).

You may recall that I praised George Clooney for his speech at the Academy Awards a couple of weeks ago upon receiving his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for “Syrianna.” Well, as you can see, Payne objected somehow to Clooney’s words in general, as well as his praise for African American actress Hattie McDaniel. What Payne said was so unbelievable that I thought the only appropriate thing to do is present his column in all its infamy and respond point by point.

Is George Clooney crazy? How could anyone otherwise in touch with reality put Hollywood on a high moral horse for awarding Hattie McDaniel a supporting role Oscar for rolling her eyes as a Negro nursemaid in "Gone with the Wind"?

If Payne thinks that that is the only reason why McDaniel won an Oscar for her role, then that is easily more racist than anything Clooney or any other Hollywood notable has said or done in recent memory. Such a notion is also patently false, proving that, assuming Payne ever actually attending a screening of “Gone With The Wind,” he surely must have slept through it. You see, Mammy (McDaniel’s character) frequently chastises Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh’s character, in one of her Oscar-winning performances) and ends up being the person who really runs the show on a day-to-day basis at Tara, the plantation where Scarlett grew up and returns after the Civil War.

Also, Payne should have paid attention to the interaction between Mammy and the character of Rhett Butler (played of course by Clark Gable, who – unbelievably – didn’t win an Oscar, losing out to Robert Donat in “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”). In the beginning, Mammy clearly dislikes Butler, with Butler taking it in stride and joking about it actually (in inimitable Gable fashion), but as the movie progresses, they reach an understanding and gradually come to respect each other more and more, to the point where they are comforting each other in the aftermath of the devastating loss of Bonnie, Rhett and Scarlett’s daughter.

Yes, I know – there are some bug-eyed, “Who dat?” moments of caricature in the movie which, rightly, would be chastised by moviegoers now, but if Payne REALLY wanted to understand McDaniel’s character in the movie, he would have actually paid attention to what was going on.

When accepting his supporting-actor Oscar the other night, Clooney declared, "We gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I'm proud to be part of this Academy. I'm proud to be part of this community." Not since Marlon Brando played Don Vito Corleone has a Hollywood actor so publicly attempted to portray a great wrong as a great right. Let's look at the record.

Do you know what that statement means? If he’s talking about the Sacheen Littlefeather episode, doesn’t he have it backwards?

When Hattie McDaniel was given her '39 Oscar, Negroes were indeed forced to sit in the back of theaters - and Hollywood helped keep them there. McDaniel's role, as most others that Hollywood selected for blacks, was drawn from minstrel show stereotypes designed to dehumanize an entire race. Producer David Selznick premiered "Gone with the Wind" in Atlanta, knowing McDaniel would not be allowed to attend the theater.

Oh, brother.

First of all, stating that Hollywood “was trying to dehumanize an entire race” is just a bit of hyperbole. If Payne means that Hollywood created roles, say, prior to World War II for blacks that played to stereotypes in an offensive manner, I’ll give him that. The first concern of Hollywood now and always has been making money, which makes it perfectly typical among institutions in this country. Concerns of what you might call “social justice” were a close second, but second all the same.

As far as I’m concerned, it is truly a “chicken or the egg” kind of argument about whether or not Hollywood was a reflection of racial attitudes in this country or the other way around. I do know that name actors, primarily Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, got “on board” with the civil rights movement in this country beginning in the 1950s when it got started, even bringing along others such as Paul Newman and Marlon Brando. Of course, God forbid that Payne would mention that.

Another thing – the reason why “GWTW” premiered in Atlanta was because it was the hometown of Margaret Mitchell, the author of the book upon which the movie was based. As far as Payne’s charge that David O. Selznick chose that location to keep McDaniel away, it is to laugh. Selznick was an egomaniacal control freak who, though addicted in equal parts to gambling and amphetamines, nonetheless understood what kind of movies people wanted to watch. He was definitely not a racist, having attended school at Columbia University near jazz clubs in New York City.

The agreeable Negro co-star let Selznick off the hook by making herself "unavailable" for the premiere in the city where the modern Ku Klux Klan had been resurrected in 1915. The same year, Hollywood, not coincidentally, released "The Birth of a Nation," a movie vilifying blacks as rapists and glorifying as antidote the white knights of the Klan. This Hollywood endorsement of Klan values, more than any other single trigger, was responsible for the nationwide resurgence of this white racist terrorist group.

The Ku Klux Klan had been flourishing for years after the Civil War, long before “Birth Of A Nation.” To say that that misguided movie is responsible for the Klan is the same as saying that Billie Holliday’s epochal jazz standard “Strange Fruit” is responsible for lynchings.

But let's get back to Crazy George.

Yes, lets, since you apparently have no clue about anything else you’re talking about.

While McDaniel's "GWTW" role may well have reassured whites, it outraged blacks. They lambasted her role as offensive when protesting the film's premiere in Los Angeles and its showing in Chicago and New York, according to AMC's film biography, "Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel." The late actress Nell Carter, interviewed in the film, describes a Hollywood of the '40s that slavishly cast black actors "as African savages, singing slaves and domestics."

As I said, it was a reflection of the times that has, happily, disappeared since. And by the way, what exactly does George Clooney have to do with that?

In real life, actress McDaniel traded group values for personal gain. "I'd rather play a maid and make $700 a week, than be a maid for $7," she said.

And this is supposed to be some kind of character defect on McDaniel’s part? She was an actress trying to earn a paycheck, in the same manner as some hack columnists I know.

Occasionally she did use her box-office clout to curb Hollywood's petit offenses. In "GWTW," she reportedly got Selznik (sp?) to drop her character's reference to "De Lawd" and got writers to drop "nigger" from the script.

Somehow I don’t think an actor, then as now, could really institute some kind of movement of “social change” for any particular race or ethnic group. Frankly, I don’t understand what Payne thought McDaniel could do.

Oh, and by the way, Payne should have someone proofread his copy for spelling of proper names next time.

Hollywood's larger problem with race is inseparable from America's. Art has the potential to slip the surly bonds of earth, as the poet suggests. But mired as it is in escapism, Hollywood shows no such interest.

Is it necessary for me to point out how ridiculous that statement truly is? Let’s see…Will Smith, Jamie Foxx (who won a Best Actor Oscar for “Ray” last year), Chris Rock (who hosted the Academy Awards a few years ago), Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett, both of whom were nominated for “What’s Love Got To Do With It?,” Whoopi Goldberg, Queen Latifah…all of these individuals and more of African American heritage have rightly achieved success for their accomplishments.

Ultimate creative control in Hollywood resides with white boys who are as ignorant about race as they are insecure about just about everything else. "Most of the black Hollywood characters revitalize the racist interests of white America," said Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima in an online interview. "They either play a racist manifestation of white America's psyche or they play the psyche of the fantasy of white America in the way it looks at race relations."

As far as I’m concerned, that statement is a clumsy attempt to invalidate the successes of the people I just mentioned.

Even with this, they are rewarded not according to talent but for generally reassuring white America about its racial innocence. After remarkable performances in "The Hurricane" and "Malcolm X," films about two especially aggressive black men, Denzel Washington got his Oscar for portraying one of the most corrupt cops in the history of filmdom in "Training Day."

At this point, we have the victim mentality gone absolutely berserk. Washington also won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for a defiant slave soldier who came to a realization about whites, with some rough prodding from Morgan Freeman – another name that deserves to be mentioned – in the film “Glory.” Washington also played South African activist Steve Biko and a distraught father trying to save his son in “John Q.” Those are definitely roles beyond thug stereotypes.

Payne is actually right that Washington was robbed concerning “Malcolm X,” for which he gave a truly amazing performance in a great film. However, I believe that antagonism by Spike Lee towards the film’s distributor had a hand in the lack of recognition for the movie also. However, to say that there was some kind of “cause and effect” going on is downright stupid.

Yes, Mr. Clooney, Hollywood did award Hattie McDaniel an Oscar for entrenching in the minds of Americans black and white for generations the humbling image of the Negro woman as "Mammy." Some 63 years and a millennium later, Clooney's enlightened Hollywood aroused itself to award its very first Oscar to a black woman for a leading role. Instead of rolling her eyes, this time, the black woman, Halle Berry, earned her faux gold statuette by baring her breasts and feeling up Billy Bob Thornton before flinging herself into his lap like a slut gone wild in "Monster's Ball."

Oh, I see he’s finally returned to attacking George Clooney. OK.

“Monster’s Ball,” by the way, is one movie that I’ve managed to watch in “bits and pieces," but I have to admit that I’ve never seen it all the way through, partly because it’s pretty long. However, from what I have seen, there is a good deal more complexity to Berry’s fine performance than Payne will admit here. And by the way, can someone explain to me how Payne’s denigration of Berry in this manner is not racist also?

It is crystal clear why George Clooney is so very "proud to be a part of this community." What about the rest of us?

If the “us” that Payne imagines actually exists and really believes what he just wrote, then that group is as much of a relic as Willie Best – pictured.