I thought Summer of Sam was an outstanding movie. The scene with Berkowitz, looking in wonder, being driven through the raucous mob with the juxtaposition of the smaller group of Leguizamo's friends, blinded by fear, ignorance and confusion that grew throughout movie, ferociously hunting down Richie, all while the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" blared in the background, was cinematic brilliance.

I don't think he was ridiculing Italians, but he used those characters and others (including himself as the incompetent black news reporter and the black looters) in a surrealistic way to heighten the madness and insanity of that summer in New York. While Richie's buddies were a bunch of bigoted dolts, who happened to be Italian, Richie, an Italian, was a Christ figure.

I can see that if you're Italian, you might be more sensitive to the portrayal, but of the movies I've seen of his that include Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever, I never interpreted the movies as a slap at Italians, but I saw them as representing something beyond ethnicity. His movies, at least the three I remember seeing, are evocative and play a little with reality in a creative way.