An important thing to remember about the internet outrage machine is that just like fire, the outrages of the day die without oxygen. So after Spike Lee ignored what everyone had to say about what he had to say about gentrification, it looked like the whole thing was gonna die off. But then A.O. Scott became the umpteenth person in America to mention that Spike Lee got rich off of making Brooklyn look cool and lives on the Upper East Side now, and that become too much for Spike. So he fired back with an oddly capitalized letter about how he’s from Brooklyn, so there.
Scott said in the New York Times that Spike Lee lived in a “glass brownstone” before mentioning what Errol Louis wrote in the Daily News about Lee commodifying Brooklyn and selling Brooklyn real estate as BK got ever more expensive. So Lee took that as…Scott being the one making that argument and said :
Mr. Scott, what you fail to understand is that I can live on The Moon and what I said is still TRUE. No matter where I choose to live that has nothing to do with it. I will always carry Brooklyn in my Blood, Heart and Soul. Did anyone call Jay-Z a Hypocrite when he helped with bringing The Nets from New Jersey to The Barclays Center in Brooklyn at the Corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenue?
Well, someone called him “a titanium golf club with “REALNESS” lasered onto the shaft to beat people into accepting the billionaire oligarch who really runs the team,” but I guess that’s not “hypocrite.” You can read the whole letter here, but if we’re being honest, the only person taking umbrage in this situation should be Errol Louis, since Lee didn’t even bother to fire back at him, which would have given him the opening to fire back at Lee and on and on forever in a circle until the Sun blessedly swallows up the Earth.