Folks, we’re having a hard time keeping up with this story. When we checked in on Friday afternoon, Clint Eastwood had just fired back at Spike Lee over his complaints that Eastwood’s Iwo Jima pictures were lacking in African-American presence. Coining perhaps his most iconic catchphrase since “Go ahead, make my day,” Eastwood remarked of Lee that “A guy like him should shut his face.” Naturally we figured that Lee, being the mellow, non-confrontational fellow we know and love, would simply let it slide. But that’s not the case.

The Guardian, the newspaper that carried the Eastwood interview in which he made remarks, now brings us Lee’s retort. The Do the Right Thing man hauls out the heavy ammunition right off the bat. "First of all, the man is not my father and we're not on a plantation either. He's a great director. He makes his films, I make my films ... And a comment like 'A guy like that should shut his face' - come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there."

“I'm not making this up,” Lee continues. “I know history. I'm a student of history. And I know the history of Hollywood and its omission of the one million African-American men and women who contributed to the second world war. Not everything was John Wayne, baby.” Responding to Eastwood’s defense that none of the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima was African-American, Lee says, “For him to insinuate that I'm rewriting history and have one of the four guys with the flag be black ... no one said that. It's just that there's not one black in either film.”

Lee wraps it up by getting topical. “Even though he's trying to have a Dirty Harry flashback, I'm going to take the Obama high road and end it right here. Peace and love.” Yes, we can only hope the upcoming McCain/Obama debates will match the level of collegial discourse found in the Eastwood/Lee dialogues.

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