5556: Fakers And Fighters.

Seeking the truth in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Baltimore police were on the lookout for two crooks that may be Comcast workers. The duo wore official uniforms and drove a Comcast van when breaking into someone’s home, handcuffing the victim and shooting him in the stomach. Cops aren’t yet sure if the uniforms and vehicle indicate the men were real cable company representatives. Bob Garfield might insist it all seems pretty typical for Comcast employees.

• A private investigator hired by R. Kelly in 2002 testified that the woman claiming she engaged in threesomes with the recording artist originally sought $300,000 in hush money. Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer would probably think $300,000 for threesomes is a pretty good deal.

• Clint Eastwood and Spike Lee are warring over film critiques. Lee started the fight during last month’s Cannes Film Festival when he questioned the lack of Black actors in Eastwood’s two war movies, “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwo Jima.” Lee said, “He did two films about Iwo Jima back to back and there was not one Black soldier in both of those films. Many veterans, African-Americans, who survived that war are upset at Clint Eastwood. In his vision of Iwo Jima, Negro soldiers did not exist. Simple as that. I have a different version.” Eastwood fired back, “The story is ‘Flags of Our Fathers,’ the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn’t do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people’d go: ‘This guy’s lost his mind.’ I mean, it’s not accurate.” Referring to Lee, Eastwood added: “A guy like him should shut his face.” Lee responded by saying, “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. The thing about it though, I didn’t personally attack him. 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. … If he wishes, I could assemble African-American men who fought at Iwo Jima and I’d like him to tell these guys that what they did was insignificant and they did not exist. I’m not making this up. 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 World War II.” Sounds like the start of World War III.