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SPIKE LEE BEGS TO DIFFER WITH GEORGE CLOONEY: Director says actor was way off with Hattie McDaniel reference in Oscar speech.

(March 21, 2006)

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*Spike Lee has gone on another tear, this time with a bulls eye on his boy, George Clooney.

While accepting the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor earlier this month, Clooney took issue with a dig in Jon Stewart’s opening monologue that suggested Hollywood, and its rich and famous inhabitants, are grossly out of touch with the rest of the world. In an attempt to protest Stewart’s remark, the “Syriana” star cited the Academy’s “forward thinking” in awarding a Best Supporting Actress Oscar to Hattie McDaniel in 1933 for “Gone With the Wind.”

To use that as an example of how progressive Hollywood is is ridiculous,” Lee said to femalefirst.co.uk. “Hattie McDaniel played Mammy in ‘Gone With the Wind.’ That film was basically saying that the wrong side won the Civil War and that black people should still be enslaved.

"C'mon! I like George a lot. I'm not hating on him. But I don't think he really thought it out. How many years was it between Hattie McDaniel and Halle Berry (winning an acting Oscar)? Sixty-some-odd? C'mon!"

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