Anyone hear about Spike Lee recently? Apparently the Knicks fan, and sometimes movie director, is a bit put out over “The PJ’s,” a new animated Fox series created by Eddie Murphy.

“I scratch my head why Eddie Murphy’s doing this because it shows no love for black people … the show is very demeaning,” Lee said.

The only reason this even warrants anyone’s attention is because of America’s tendency to search for example and validation through television and film. But guess what — everybody on television ain’t you!

Or me.

For those unfamiliar with the program, “The PJ’s” is an animated series set in a housing project where old people eat dog food because they’re poor, the Jamaican residents are always high, the pimps, crackheads and prostitutes run rampant and everybody is pretty stupid.

The show sucks, but it sucks for none of the mentioned reasons. It’s just not funny and probably won’t be around very long, but this is not the point.

Sandra Bernhardt came out of the premiere for “Harlem Nights” ten years ago, and in effect, said the same thing; she essentially wondered aloud why black people would portray themselves in such a negative light.

Well, guess what — it’s because there’s not one black person in Hollywood whose title is Sandra’s or anybody else’s tour guide to the everyday black person. No movie will ever be produced with a caption on the poster that reads: “Finally, what black folks are really like.”

I will be first in line for a film whose trailer opens with the traditional trailer voice bellowing, “The PJ’s told you they were ghetto.”

“New Jack City” convinced us they all sold drugs, and “Pulp Fiction” showed us they’re all Bad Motherfuckers with Jerri Curls who shoot everybody and hang with Travolta.

But now we have the truth: “Blacks in the Suburbs!”

Starring Bill Cosby, Clarence Thomas, Michael Jordan and Will Smith. There’s where the logic lies, my friend. Black people, like everybody else, have shades and nuances and subtleties. We are different. Television and feature films should be held to a creed that demonstrates only that.

Television has embraced stereotypes since the beginning of time. Anyone remember “The Jeffersons?” I have a hard time believing George or Weezy represented only the most elegant and refined of the African-American race. Or perhaps their affluence was license to present stereotype and low standard.

Fat Albert sure as hell didn’t represent my family. I would’ve caught a strong backhand at some point if I looked like that boy. If Fat Albert was a real kid today, he and his whole damn family would be booed off the “Jenny Jones” stage faster than you can yell “hey, hey, hey.”

What about shows from the ’90s? Is every single white female lawyer from Boston also an anorexic, male obsessed husband hunter with emotional issues and a tendency to stammer? ‘Cause Ally McBeal is.

How about New Yorkers? If you hop a plane and get off in JFK, is every woman you meet gonna be Rachel, Phoebe, Monica or Felicity? (God, I hope so.)

The PJ’s are not every black family today, just like the Cosbys weren’t every black family 12 years ago.

Here’s one just for the white people: remember “The Dukes of Hazard?” Now as a youngster, did your family climb in and out of the car ’cause your doors didn’t work? Did you have an inbred friend named Cleetus? Did you have a cousin who looked, dressed or acted like Daisy Duke?

The point for today is this: art is art. No matter what the medium, the purveyor of whatever trash you tune into has the right to maintain that trash.

Membership to any particular race, gender or creed does not come with any direct obligation to produce a video brochure replete with supermodel mothers and fathers living an idealistic life with three flawless kids cruising over life’s problems in a SUV made by Lexus.

No, life is raunchy, dirty and generally messed up. To censor any portrayal puts in danger the very worldly notions Lee would have all people embrace. Without extremes, there is no standard, regardless of what we hope it to be.

The exception is what draws. Is everybody funny like Seinfeld? How many people like George or Kramer do you really know? These are caricatures and exaggerations of what we are all intimate with in our lives. Any humans being worth a salt know the difference between reality and fiction. That is why we all laugh at the comedians and admire the action heroes.

I have no acquaintances that even resemble the cast of “Law and Order.” My friends are not the ensemble of “90210.” “Melrose Place” shares no similarities with my building. Television is an escape into itself and ourselves.

We hope, laugh and examine together. Spike should learn to not take it personally.

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Zuri Jerdon is a graduate student in English from Arlington, Va.