Dear Clint Eastwood,
Why are you such an asshole?
I love your films Clint Eastwood, and I think you’re one of the best directors working. Films like Million Dollar Baby and Unforgiven are cultural phenomena, and I still often ask myself if I feel lucky, punk. Your historical pieces as fantastic, with J Edgar being one of my favorite movies of 2011. You also directed one of my favorite movies of all time, Mystic River, and I thank you for that. Through your career, you have demonstrated skill and passion for the art of film, and you have made a lasting impact on it. Plus you look pretty good for 86. So why, in your personal life, are you such a crotchety stick in the mud?
About two weeks ago, you said in an interview that my generation, the Millennial generation were “a Pussy Generation,” coddled by society with no work ethic. You also stated that we’re too easily offended, and that we should “fucking get over it,” it being Donald Trump’s blatant racism and sexism. You smugly spoke against the “laziness” of my generation, suggesting that the reason many of us supported Bernie Sanders was so that we wouldn’t have to work in the future. All in all, you were a judgmental, smug, know-it-all, a character you are all too familiar with playing.
Mr. Eastwood, respectfully, I have to ask you to kindly get the fuck over yourself, and your entire generation with your millennial bashing, lazy rhetoric of loss of work ethic and oversensitivity. Allow me to remind you of a few things about the differences between your generation and mine.
When you talk about a loss of work ethic, I really have to ask where your evidence is. In my time in the “real world” that you so verbosely wax poetic about, I have seen some damn hard working millennials. From engineering students in the labs, to retail employees selling you your shoes, we work hard on wages not adjusted for inflation, something your generation had the pleasure of not experiencing. Or maybe we just can’t find jobs, since economic practices and those glorious Reagan and Bush eras you love sent us into a recession. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s pretty unfair to compare the work ethics of our two generations, considering one of us dropped out of college and found fortune in the most economically successful period of American history, while the other is graduating undergrad with $30,000 in student debt with hopes of paying that off in the next 15-20 years. You criticizing my generation for not handling the real world is a lot like an arsonist giving a poor review to the fire department sent to clean up the mess.
As for your defense of Donald Trump, I really am surprised. I’d really like to think that after Grand Torino and Million Dollar Baby, you’d be able to empathize with minorities and women a little more, since you played characters who overcame their original uninformed perceptions of both and overcame your prejudices. But maybe I’m asking too much from a man who graduated high school before Brown v. Board of Education. Maybe it was interacting with different races, ethnicities, and genders from an early age, or living in a society that promotes multiculturalism, or just having common human decency to know that it’s wrong to insinuate that an entire group of economically underprivileged persons are rapist, murderers, and thieves. Maybe I am “too sensitive” when I take offence at a man who openly mocks the disabled, or makes sexually harassing comments towards women, or calls for an assassination of his opponent. Or maybe you and I are just two straight, white, men who have different reactions to the increasing projects of equality and removal of our unjust privileges from society. The difference between you and I, Clint Eastwood, is that when I used to make insensitive and “un-PC” comments, I eventually learned who I was hurting and the oppressive forces I was strengthening, whereas you just take criticism as your own oppression.
So thanks Clint Eastwood, but no thanks. As much as I will continue to watch and analyze your future projects, I hope that you can come to your senses and see Donald Trump for the fascist that he is, and maybe stop debating empty chairs too. By the way, that baby in American Sniper was super fake looking, what were you even thinking?
Sincerely,
Your average whiny, entitled Millennial.
