N-Word Used 109 Times in Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” Starring Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington

Tavis Smiley slams “Django Unchained,” calls it a “spoof about slavery.” Is anyone surprised that he joins Spike Lee in panning the controversial movie? Tavis Smiley told the Daily Beast he refuses to see the movie and won’t pay to see it, but has read the screenplay.

During the interview with the Daily Beast, he called out Quentin Tarantino for his “arrogance” and slammed his criticism of the legendary television miniseries, “Roots.” Tarantino said of Roots in a previous interview with the Daily Beast, “When you look at Roots, nothing about it rings true in the storytelling, and none of the performances ring true for me either.”He added, “It didn’t move me because it claimed to be something it wasn’t.” I suppose “Django Unchained” is supposed to move us, but I, too, refuse to watch this mockery of slavery.

More on Tavis Smiley’s comments:  ”I’m troubled that Hollywood won’t get serious about making an authentic film about the holocaust of slavery but they will greenlight a spoof about slavery, and it’s as if this spoof about slavery somehow makes slavery a bit easier to swallow. The suffering of black people is not reducible to revenge and retribution. The black tradition has taught the nation what it means to love. Put it another way: black people have learned to love America in spite of, not because of, so if the justification for the film in the end is, as Jamie Foxx’s Django says, “What, kill white people and get paid for it? What’s wrong with that?”­ well again, black suffering is not reducible to revenge and retribution.”

So, let me get this straight — when the black guy, Alex Haley, tells his version of slavery in “Roots,” it’s not authentic, but when the white guy, Quentin Tarantino, does in “Django Unchained,” it’s authentic? Wow, that took a great deal of hubris on Quentin Tarantino’s part to make such an assertion.