Actor Samuel L. Jackson gave a long, in-depth interview to Playboy magazine, going over his career and his opinion of today’s movies, but one comment has gotten the headlines: his criticism of President Barack Obama.
In the interview, writer Stephen Rebello and Jackson discuss the importance of good grammar. Then, Rebello asks Jackson what he thinks of a “society that views graduating from college or grad school as elitist, or one in which President Obama or other highly educated Americans consciously drop gs off the ends of words to sound like Joe Average?”
“First of all, we know it ain’t because of his blackness, so I say stop trying to ‘relate,’” Jackson replied. “Be a leader. Be f**king presidential. Look, I grew up in a society where I could say ‘It ain’t’ or ‘What it be’ to my friends. But when I’m out presenting myself to the world as me, who graduated from college, who had family who cared about me, who has a well-read background, I f**king conjugate.”
As TheGrio notes, Jackson had previously hoped that Obama would get ‘scary’ if he won a second term, but things haven’t panned out the way the Django Unchained actor had hoped.
“He got a little heated about the kids getting killed in Newtown and about the gun law,” Jackson told Playboy, but that’s the extent of Obama showing some anger, according to Jackson.
“He’s still a safe dude. But with those Republicans, we’re now in a situation where even if he said, ‘I want to give you motherf**kers a raise,’ they’d go, ‘F**k you! We don’t want a raise!’” He continued, “How do we fix the fact that politicians aren’t trying to serve the people, they’re just trying to serve their party and their closed ideals?”
Jackson will next be seen in Spike Lee’s Oldboy in November.
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