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Vandals targeted the former Brooklyn home of director Spike Lee days after a video of the director ranting against gentrification went viral. The vandals sprayed “Do The Right Thing,” on the front of the brownstone home in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. The message is the title of one of Lee’s best-known movies, which tackles the subject of racial tension in a Brooklyn neighborhood. Lee’s former home had part of the title written on the side of its stoop. …

NEW YORK — (TG) New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, acting swiftly in response to an emotional, expletive-littered denunciation of gentrification by perennially furious movie director Spike Lee, has issued an emergency directive ordering all refuse collected in the city to be dumped on up-and-coming Brooklyn enclave Fort Greene. The mayoral action is intended to address a number of concerns raised by Lee, a Fort Greene native, during a thunderous speech he delivered at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute on Tuesday. Lee, furious that white yuppies emboldened by a lack of violent crime now enter the neighborhood with impunity, delivered a...

It’s interesting that the director of the richest oeuvre of black films in the history of the medium doesn’t understand what the Civil Rights revolution was for. In his expletive-laced comments about the gentrification of Fort Greene during an interview at the Pratt Institute, Spike Lee seemed to think that what we Overcame for was to be grouchy bigots. Basically, black people are getting paid more money than they’ve ever seen in their lives for their houses, and a once sketchy neighborhood is now quiet and pleasant. And this is a bad thing… why? Lee seems to think it’s somehow...

His parents still live there. He still keeps an office there. But it's not the same neighborhood he grew up in, and his feelings about newcomers now inhabiting once-blighted parts of America's most-populous city like Fort Greene slapped many people in the face after the famed director went into an expletive-laced rant during an African-American History Month lecture on Tuesday. Spike Lee on gentrification "I grew up here in New York. It's changed," Lee said at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, an art, design, and architecture school. "And why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the South Bronx,...

White liberals have been very good to Spike Lee, pouring money and praise upon him in return for the excruciatingly politically correct movies he directs. Here he returns the favor exactly as we have come to expect: Spike Lee went on a long-winded rant against gentrification in New York City on Tuesday night when he was asked to argue against the development of poorer neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Harlem. … Lee pointed the finger at white New Yorkers who have moved into historically black neighborhoods and changed the environment, arguing that those changes have caused the areas to evolve into...

<p>The "Defend Brooklyn" hoodie that Spike Lee wore last night should've been a clear indicator regarding his thoughts on gentrification in the borough that raised him.</p> <p>Last night, Lee appeared at Pratt Institute for a Black History Month lecture, but the discussion quickly became a piercingly truthful rant from the opinionated auteur. Citing a New York Times article about the supposed good of gentrification, Lee unleashed a seven-minute tirade about how the changes in Brooklyn infuriate him, specifically the "Christopher Columbus Syndrome."</p>

The Brooklyn-raised director launched into an argument about the drawbacks of gentrification Compared Fort Greene Park to the 'motherf*****' Wesminster Dog Show' because it is so clean Lee was raised in Brooklyn but has lived in the Upper East Side since 2000 Spike Lee went on a long-winded rant against gentrification in New York City on Tuesday night when he was asked to argue against the development of poorer neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Harlem. The director, who has focused on racial issues and gentrification in his films, blasted an audience member at the Pratt Institute who started defending the changes...

DAVID GREENE, HOST: … wealthy donors like Tom Steyer are putting a pistol to someone's head, forcing their pet issues on candidates. Steyer himself sees things very differently. He quit his hedge fund with $1.5 billion and now in his view he's fighting as hard as he can with money and passion to do something very noble - save the planet. .. With plans to pour $100 million into key elections this year, Steyer joins this elite group of wealthy individuals trying to influence politicians and voters. Steyer says he doesn't agree with the growing influence of money in politics...

Meryl Streep had some choice words to say about Walt Disney during remarks she made Tuesday at an awards gala where she was honoring "Saving Mr. Banks" star Emma Thompson. The "August: Osage County" star called out Disney as both sexist and anti-Semitic while presenting the best actress prize to Thompson at the National Board of Review awards in New York.

Beyoncé has been labeled "insensitive" by some current and former NASA astronauts and their families for sampling audio from the space shuttle Challenger disaster for a love song off her newly released album. Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center Jan. 28, 1986. All seven crewmembers aboard were killed. "Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction," now-retired NASA public affairs officer Steve Nesbitt said as the nation watched wreckage fall toward the ocean on live television. Twenty-seven years later, Nesbitt's voice is heard at the beginning of the video for...

Charlie Sheen is giving voice to the voice-less in a raging Twitter rant addressing “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson, who’s in the middle of a controversy over anti-gay and racial comments made during an interview with GQ magazine. No stranger to being in the middle of a media firestorm himself, Sheen shows no mercy for Robertson in a very angry missive posted to Twitter on Saturday. “You have offended and hurt so many dear friends of mine, who DO NOT have the voice or the outreach that I do,” FX’s “Anger Management” star said. “Well, news flash shower-dodger, I will...

Can you imagine a priest taking a group of altar boys to see the movie “Deliverance?” According to Tim Robbins, when he was an altar boy in New York City, at the age of ten or eleven, a priest at his church took him and some other altar boys into Times Square to see the R-rated film which contained a brutal homosexual rape scene.

"[Obama] was walking into a huge, huge challenge. Like a lot of people who read and care and follow, I can't say that I agree with every decision, but I feel his leadership has been sound, I feel like the administration has worked in constructive ways and continues to," Howard said. "I certainly have no reservations of my having supported him." Howard said governing is hard for anyone when politicians go to partisan extremes, as the country saw with the recent federal government shutdown. The director said he champions a "militant middle" where people can come together and compromise their...

The Obama administration has prohibited the Kennedy family from practicing its Catholicism, and the Kennedys now intend to ask the Supreme Court to restore their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. Their case could become one of the most consequential in our nation's history. The issue: Will the most fundamental liberty of all -- freedom of conscience -- survive in post-Obama America? John Kennedy serves as president of Autocam and Autocam Medical, Michigan-based companies that produce automobile components and medical devices. He and his family own the companies, which employ 661 people in the United States. The...

It really is hysterical listening to liberal Hollywoodans talk about politics. Take for example actor/director Rob Reiner - made famous by his role as Meathead in the legendary sitcom All in the Family - claiming on HBO's Real Time Friday ("Overtime" web segment) that Barack Obama politically "is right around where Reagan was" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Argo director Ben Affleck may be one of Hollywood's leading liberals, but he could take the extra step and enter politics in the not too distant future. That's the opinion of his wife, actor Jennifer Garner, who suggested Affleck's future career direction in a forthcoming interview in Allure magazine.

Bryan Zuriff, the executive producer of the Showtime drama Ray Donovan, pleaded guilty in a federal court to his role in gambling operations with suspected ties to the Russian Mafia which took sports bets and ran poker tables for the fabulous people in Los Angeles, CA and New York, NY as reported by the Daily News. Earlier this year the feds indicted 34 defendants for their alleged roles in the gambling schemes, and Zuriff is the first to plead guilty. The 44-year-old degenerate gambler agreed to forfeit $500,000, and faces up to five years in prison when sentenced on November...

Pop singer Katy Perry and the son of Mia Farrow agree on one thing regarding the acquittal of George Zimmerman--it confirms their feelings that America remains a racist society. Ronan Farrow, the biological son of the actress and her former beau, Woody Allen, unleashed a tweet today bemoaning the state of the U.S. judicial system in the wake of Zimmerman's not guilty verdict in the Trayvon Martin killing case. And Perry was only too proud to retweet Farrow's race-obsessed viewpoint: Ugh, my tummy turns. RT “@RonanFarrow: American justice: still colorblind (as long as you're white).”

Bette Midler is taking a different approach. The Parental Guidance star imagines a world in which the U.S. lost the war for its independence, but it's not like that's a bad thing. After all, she argues, that would mean we'd finally have socialized medicine.

Jenny Price believes everyone should have access to the public beaches in Malibu Traditionally it has been hard for people to access the beaches because access is blocked by homes of the rich and famousShe has created an app which tells ordinary people which bogus 'No Trespassing' to ignoreBeachfront homeowners in the exclusive L.A. neighborhood of Malibu are up in arms about a new smartphone app which provides anyone using it with evaluable information about how to get to the area’s hard to reach public beaches. Environmental writer Jenny Price passionately believes that everyone deserves access to the area's public...