On Thursday’s edition of “CNN Tonight with Don Lemon,” New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow and character actor Graham Beckel get into a heated and absurd exchange over director Clint Eastwood’s comments about race in Esquire Magazine.
In the interview released this week, Eastwood said:
“… We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren’t called racist … [Trump’s] said a lot of dumb things. So have all of them. Both sides. But everybody—the press and everybody’s going, ‘Oh, well, that’s racist,’ and they’re making a big hoodoo out of it. Just f—king get over it.”
In the clip, Blow attacks Eastwood for his lack of understanding and dismissal of victims of racism in the country.
“I’m blown away by all the euphemisms we’re using right now,” Blow explains. “In the interview he says some of the things that I used to say and some of the things Trump is saying, that people say are not racist, we didn’t used to call it racist. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t.”
The columnist adds that Eastwood’s stance on political correctness is a blanket statement for bigoted comments.
“And this idea that he says later that people should just get over it. It is fascinating to me and in fact supremely insulting when people who were never subjects of the bitterness and pain and subjugation of racism to tell people who were that you should just get over it. And to cast that — political correctness has become this blanket that people throw over everything they want to say, or want to do.”
Then Beckel goes on a rant calling Eastwood “the masculine ideal.”
“Everyone in Hollywood kisses a–, except for people with a tremendous amount of integrity, he being one of them,” the actor states in support of Eastwood’s comments.
“I don’t get what the racist thing is,” Beckel exclaims. “… The post-colonial victim s–t.”
Then the actor asks Blow about Black troops serving under George Washington at Valley Forge.
