November 27, 2005
OH YEAH, WELL WE CONSERVATIVES HAVE INNER BEAUTY
How a heart-throb became the voice of liberal America (Paul Harris, The Observer, November 27th, 2005)
George Clooney was adamant about one thing last week: he was not attacking the President in his gripping new film about the Middle East - he was slamming the entire geopolitical system.'It is not an attack on the Bush administration, but it is an attack on the system that has been in place for 60 or 70 years - oil always being at the centre of it,' the actor told an interviewer.
The debonair Clooney, the playboy actor once best known for keeping a pet pig and being the consummate ladies' man, has clearly taken on an unlikely role: the new King of Liberal Hollywood.
Unseating old-time liberal 'actor-vists' such as Warren Beatty, Tim Robbins and director Rob Reiner, Clooney has now emerged as the leading political voice in Hollywood, winning plaudits from liberals and stinging attacks from conservatives.
His two most recent films have slammed a broad range of targets, including US foreign policy in the Middle East, the corruption of oil companies and the Red-baiting of the McCarthyite era. In interview after interview, Clooney has spoken out on his favourite social issues and is a senior campaigner with the Make Poverty History movement that saw him recently lobby the president of the World Bank for aid to Africa alongside rock star Bono. 'I'm an old-time liberal and I don't apologise for it,' he recently told Newsweek.
Why does the dark side seem to attract most of the gorgeous ones?
Posted by Peter Burnet at November 27, 2005 7:46 AMGeorge Clooney is nowhere near gorgeous and very near gore-like dumb.
Posted by: erp at November 27, 2005 8:25 AMHe couldn't even get his dad elected to Congress in Kentucky. Nobody votes as Hollywood tells them to. Only a British reporter is gullible enought to believe that George Clooney is an influential political figure.
Posted by: Melissa at November 27, 2005 8:41 AMWhat's wrong with McCarthy?
Otherwise he's on track regarding the oil patch. If Carter hadn't been elected President we wouldn't be in this pickel now Ollie.
Posted by: Genecis at November 27, 2005 10:09 AMI respectively beg to differ:
ARE CONSERVATIVE WOMEN PRETTIER THAN LIBERAL WOMEN?
Posted by: Rick T. at November 27, 2005 10:17 AMThank-you, Rick. Never have I been so grateful for being proven wrong. At the time, all I could think of was Clooney, Beatty, Pitt and a gaggle of Kennedys matched against Gingrich, Wolfowitz and Whitaker Chambers.
Posted by: Peter B at November 27, 2005 10:42 AMThese message films aren't money makers. Did anyone go to see the remake of "The Manchurian Candidate"? Or "The Constant Gardener"? These are vanity projects, they allow aging actors who make bundles of money on their looks to show the world that they have "substance" or "gravitas".
Posted by: Robert Duquette at November 27, 2005 10:59 AMCorrect me if I'm wrong, but isn't the geopolitical "system that has been in place the last 60 or 70 years" that Clooney is attacking the very same system that Bush/Cheney/Rice are also attacking?
To put it another way, are not Clooney and the Neocons all on the same team re the Middle East?
At the end of OJ's citation, Clooney calls himself an "old-time liberal." Is this code? Was he blinking his eyes rhythmically, possibly to spell out S.O.S.? Methinks that Clooney is "convertible" and that, as soon as Dad passes, he will be a force for good and not evil. Perhaps he's not stupid, he might just appear stupid because, in trying to phrase things so carefully-- so as not to offend the crazies on the left-- he ends up spewing nonsense. Just a theory. Track him-- he will "turn." (Maybe his percocet hasta wear off first!)
Clooney ran away when Bill O'Reilly slammed him for not knowing where the money was going son some relief effort George was involved in.
Rather than stand and explain, he jived Bill and ducked the vaunted No Spin Zone. Even Mary Mapes and Terri Gross have gone in there, along with Dan Rather and Reverend Al.
erp is right - Clooney is dumb. When he re-made "Fail-Safe" I was surprised. It is a good story, but doesn't 1964 seem a long, long time ago? His movie with Nicole Kidman about a rogue bomb was much better (although both he and Nicole would have been dead in a matter of weeks after inhaling a fair amount of plutonium dust).
Posted by: jim hamlen at November 27, 2005 12:30 PMjim, not one of today's Hollywood lefties is smart, unlike the lefties of the 30's and 40's who, although misguided politically, were very bright and creative people.
Richard Gere, as gorgeous as any human being has the right to be, might as well be a robot for all the intelligence shinning through his eyes. Take a look at another gorgeous man of the left, Viggo Mortensen, who was great as Aragorn in the LOTR because all he had to do was scowl and let his check bones do the talking, but in the final scenes of the king returning, he's a blank and in contemporary films, he's a total dud.
I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't more creative Hollywood people who are closet conservatives. The movie business is going down hill as are all the media, so maybe we'll be seeing changes for the better coming soon.
Posted by: erp at November 27, 2005 2:30 PMEverything I've read & heard about this movie makes it seem like the modern equivalent of Hollywood making a movie in 1944 portraying the long history of US attempts to control natural resources in Eastern Asia...
Posted by: b at November 27, 2005 9:19 PM