You know, I want to like Lee. One of the great things about movies and literature is the ability to shock people. It's a childish impulse at heart, but great when you're deconstructing philosophies. In satirical cases, the childish impulse is justified by the purpose of the deconstruction. The need to expose the hypocrisy is much more than the jollies of the person doing the ripping.<br /><br />Unfortunately for Lee, satire requires a deft touch. Being too coy and the satire fails as a justification for the subject of the satire in the first place. Being too blunt and the satire comes off as preachy and self-serving. Lee and his work fall into the latter; he does not have the touch to do effective satire because he is too close to the subject matter. Lee has some valuable insight into matters of race (in that he never fails to remind us) and we take him at his word. Sadly, he is so bitterly one-sided that his preaching. Given his lust to bash all sides as a battle between him and THE WORLD, his movies often come off as diatribes that are disconnected from reality. The power of cinema is to put a person in a differing standpoint through prospective, and Lee doesn't grasp that. To him, it's a bigger stage for his ego and himself and we are 'fortunate' enough to pay only a meager fee to finance his house to hear this Great Oracle of the Nike Commercials speak his wisdom..which is about as intelligent as a thirteen-year old Goth girl talking about death and cutting herself.<br /><br />The racial politics behind Drop Squad are so pathetic--rich equals white and poor equals black--is that it makes a mockery out of Lee's MLK love. Lee never really grasps the idea of racism has a solid element of class-ism behind it. If you're black, you're poor yet humble. If you're white, you're rich and morally bankrupt. And if you're black and rich, then you're white and need to be knocked back down into being black. And with this, Lee's world of racism is complete according to this movie. And that idea is so self-hating and overly simplified that it defies logic. Are we watching an examination of race relations, or are we watching a poor little rich boy deal with his unresolved racial/class issues by endorsing the same idea of Crab Theory--see "The Corner" for more on this in a much more mature way then Lee could ever imagine or wants to--that tortured him as he was growing up? In fact, why doesn't Lee grow up and make movies a bit more textured instead of playing the game he was forced to as he was growing up? In short, Lee's "Do the Right Thing" was the alpha and omega of his career. He would never show the same maturity or grow above it ever again. In a sense, he sold out himself, and the world is lesser for it.