I saw Bamboozled on cable years ago and could not watch the entire movie. I was very uncomfortable with the racist minstrel characters and those dehumanizing vintage toys. Flash forward to 2012 and I happened across it again. Wow, what a difference 10 years make. Since the election of Barack Obama, seemingly normal white people have lost their collective minds. They spent years denying the president's legal citizenship. They joined anti government Tea Party groups not because they did not wanted their big gov't social security checks but because they wanted to hang with a bunch of aging bigots carrying signs of the President dressed as a Kenyan native.
Where does Bamboozled fit in? These very same people love Herman Cain. It took me awhile but I finally got it, Mr Lee. Herman Cain is the Negro that white America is comfortable with. A self confessed sitting on the back of the bus entertaining... "awwwwww shucky ducky now" Negro. The Racist Tea Party folks could not get enough of him and his simplistic 9-9-9 plan. . When white women accused Mr Cain of sexual harassment, that just comforted them more because everyone knows Negros love white women. I guarantee you that if Herman Cain had darkened his skin with a burnt cork, the Tea Party folks would have lapped it up. His audience could have easily started to sport a black face too and proclaimed loudly to the press, "See we aren't racist!" The Herman Cain train exemplified everything that Spike Lee was saying in this dark comedy. Americans do not want to see African Americans represented by the Bill Cosby Show or the educated, functional Obama family. They want a minstrel show.
The movie is heartbreaking as is the behavior of many Americans. Thank you Spike Lee.
