This article needs a bit more of a
personal introduction than usual.
I'm not like the overwhelming majority
of the writers on this site or indeed social media in general. First of all I
have barely any footprint to speak of. Second for most of my career I stuck to
my lane of criticism. I expanded it to history and politics only gradually and
basically only staying in that lane. I wasn't writing to provoke or court
controversy or in order to gain hundreds or thousands of followers. And perhaps
for that reason it's taken me a considerable amount of time to gain even close to
a thousand.
I don't seek conflict by nature, in my
personal life or online. It's just not me. I want to engage in reasonable,
logical debate and have constructive conversation. You know the exact opposite
of what we seem to use the internet for these days. Whenever I challenged
somebody in the comments section I did so painstakingly, usually with my own
historical information (which I found in books rather then the internet) and
always with the intention of giving the author the chance to give me an answer
based on facts. I was usually met with silence and then increasingly with
hostility.
In the past year and a half I have
dipped my toe very cautiously into current events. Even then I stay in
my own lane, usually using metaphor, always dotting my I's and crossing my T's.
I'm still greeted with hostility far too often but by this point I've come to
realize that the criticism is not about me but them. Specifically
they care more about followers and their own approval from virtual people. For
me, it's nice but not a necessity. I can take it or leave it. I will take the
applause when it comes, when there is constructive criticism I will hear it
out, and the vitriol and name calling, well, increasingly my attitude is to
treat with satire and humor.
Every so often, usually late at night
when I've seen something that troubles me, I will write a long column to get my
feelings out. Then I put in a file and decide if I want to publish it or not
after a day. Sometimes the urge passes, sometimes it doesn't, but I always take
the time before I put on the internet where the world can see it.
Other times I've written articles
thinking they will provoke an explosive reaction from this site. The
overwhelming majority of the time it doesn't get a reaction at all. I'm
initially disappointed, but usually I'm relieved. I'm a consensus builder and I
avoid conflict.
So when two weeks ago I wrote a long
article about Natalie Portman and a statement she made about the omission of
female directors it was not one of those pieces. I don't like making
accusations based on no evidence and I want to give people, even people I
disagree with, the benefit of the doubt. Given the timing of her statement and the
information available I didn't think there was any other conclusions to draw
then the two I reached. And it was only in regard to her statement about the
lack of female directors being nominated by the Oscars that week. I only spoke
about politics very generally because that was not the purpose of the article.
What it came down to was the idea of
an informed opinion and in uninformed one. I argued that because Portman was an
actress she was informed to talk about her industry and less informed to
talk about anything that didn't involve Hollywood. Her statement about the
omission of female directors in this year's Oscars seemed to argue that at best
she was uninformed about even that. That has never struck me as a controversial
idea at any time in my entire life. The fact that social media and the internet
have basically obliterated the difference between those two shouldn't make it
any less true.
I didn't state that in my article and
indeed I haven't written it any of the articles I've written before mainly
because I thought it went without saying. Given some of the more virulent
reactions to some of my own articles I have only myself to blame for not
realizing this is no longer a universally held truth.
Now after two weeks this article has
gotten a lot of claps and mostly positive reaction. I'm grateful for it and the
constructive criticism and as always the name-calling doesn't bother me as much
as it used to. What it has made clear is that for more than a few people who
peruse the internet not only is there no difference between an informed opinion
and an uninformed one but many people are fine even if an uninformed opinion
express because they believe it’s a valid one to have. Many of those same
people believe its perfectly fine to support a celebrity whose wife felt it
fine to cut off relations with loved ones because of who they voted for but that's
another story and I already know for many of them it’s a non-starter to argue
this point.
Instead what I'd like to do is answer
a different question that I've been posed more than a few times in this article
in particular: why shouldn't a famous person be allowed to raise awareness for
their point of view? Well I have the facts on my side, and I've expressed them
in other articles.
I'll summarize:
Many Americans think Hollywood is a
wing of the Democratic party.
The idea of the 'limousine liberal'
has done much to push the working class voter into the Republican Party and
that has accelerated since Trump's first run for the Presidency.
After the 2024 election, the
Republicans won the White House and both houses of Congress, leaving the
Democrats unable to provide a check on Trump leading to the current
administrations actions.
The Democrats need to win power back
to bring about the kinds of changes needed to repair America after the least
decade and that means winning independents and working class voters.
Conclusion: Hollywood should shut up
and therefore not make any unforced errors that will be a burden to the
Democrats in the mid-terms.
Now I'm not saying that's the only
thing Democrats need to do in order to win – I've made some suggestions in
other articles and I will make more over the next few months. But if you want
to try and convince the average American that you're on their side, having a
bunch of millionaires making the kinds of political statements that Fox News
can tie to the 'coastal elites' is absolutely not going to help. I don't know
if the Democrats have realized this; I know for sure Hollywood has not.
Hollywood looks at problems in methods
that are very much of the left-wing approach for the last half-century:
The problems in our institutions are
so great that they need to be completely torn down, rather than reform.
In order to do this, the people must
act, but since the electoral process can't be trusted it is useless to the
cause.
Therefore we must raise awareness so
that once the people know they will…
I've trailed off because in all the
years of reading and seeing left-wing people not only do they not finish that
last sentence, they rarely reach it all.
And Hollywood celebrities are focused
on 'raising awareness' as if they believe, without irony, the only reason we
still have these deep societal problems is that Mark Ruffalo has not been
speaking out about them and Michael Moore has not been making films about them.
Considering that they truly seem to belief 'no publicity is bad publicity' when
it comes to their own industry they may genuine believe the same applies to all
aspects of life. It is certainly seen that way among many of the people I've
encountered on this site and others, but I'm not like them: I won't make this entirely
about me.
I've made my other arguments about how
Hollywood has not helped over the last year based on economic factors within
the industry as well and how increasingly in the past year they seem to be
going out of their way to prove that they are out-of-touch, annoying,
privileged Americans who think they know what is best for the average person
even though they haven't been one for years.
Now I can understand why one would
want an academic to talk about certain subjects: they've at least spent time
researching and studying. I don't per se believe in the left-wing bias of these
academics mainly because I've seen more than my share of right-wing academics
over the years. But I respect them more because many of them have informed opinions.
The same can't be said for an actor or a director. And that brings me, finally,
to George Clooney.
A little review because a lot's
happened in two years. On June 27th 2024 after the presidential
primaries for both parties were over Joe Biden and Donald Trump had what would
be their only presidential debate for that year. Before it was even half over
America, if not the world, had come to the stunning realization: that the
Commander-in-Chief was clearly not capable of engaging in a coherent debate.
This in itself was horrifying enough.
But it was immediately swept away by more terrifying implications for the
Democratic Party: their nominee for President was in no mental condition to serve a second term.
(We'd learn not much long after Biden left office that he developed a kind of
bone cancer that would have almost certainly made him physically
incapacitated.) The party had never been wild about Biden running for
reelection in the first place: had he won he would have been eighty two years
old when he was sworn in. Combined with negative popularity ratings even before
the leading up to 2024 many had worried about his ability to do win reelection.
The reason I suspect the Democrats had
stood by him was because he had been the picture of calm during the 2022
midterms when everyone in America in both parties had been certain there was
going to be a 'red wave'. Biden was the only one who believed otherwise and
everyone thought he was an idiot. And then the Democrats bucked the odds and
had the best midterms of an incumbent party in 20 years and the best for any
Democrat since FDR. To ask him to not
stand for reelection after that would have seemed ungrateful to the man who'd
brought them back into power two years earlier and helped them keep it to an
extent. I suspect that is why everyone in the party kept any doubts to
themselves about Biden's competency for the next year and a half.
When it became apparent to the world
that Biden wasn't up to the job the Democrats understandably panicked. They
were already facing a difficult map in the Senate and Biden on the ticket now
seemed certain to not only sweep Trump into office but completely destroy the
Democrats at every level. The Republicans who were about to nominate Trump by
acclimation were overjoyed. (Maybe some of them wondered if it had made sense
to stand by Trump because now it seemed Republican could win against Biden.
Story for another day.) There was clearly division in the ranks and while some
Democrats were demanding Biden step down, many more were either standing by him
or being quiet.
Now The New York Times, not
without reason, is considered one of the most anti-Trump publications in the
country. They had supported Biden throughout his administration in the op-eds,
though to be clear, not as enthusiastically as the right might think. But the
paper of record couldn't just close its eyes and say that Biden was fit for
office having seen that debate. I can't imagine it was easy to find a Democrat
of any standing who would be willing to say what needed to be said out loud.
With that all being said when they
allowed George Clooney to write an op-ed on July 10th they came as
close to being a tabloid as they've ever been in my lifetime of reading them. And Clooney should count his blessings for the
rest of his life that America and the free world was so concerned with what was
happening with the country that they essentially gave him a pass.
Because make no mistake: under normal
circumstances the fact that one of the biggest actors and forces in Hollywood
was writing an op-ed arguing that the President of the United States needed to
not stand for reelection with the seriousness of delivering a monologue from
one of his films should have made him a laughingstock in the country, the
industry and the free world. Some people
no doubt might have opened the Times and thought they were reading The Onion
or The Babylon Bee.
And its striking that the day it was written Jake Tapper called it: '"the
most damning, damning opinion' with a straight face because Clooney had 'led
some of the Democratic Party's biggest fundraisers." He admitted that was his biggest qualification
and no doubt because he'd won an Oscar. Perhaps if Ed Harris had written it, we
would have taken it less seriously
Let's get to why Clooney wrote the
op-ed. He said that he was holding a fundraiser for the Democratic Party with
Biden in attendance a week before the
debate where he behaved in a fashion that was identical to his performance on
the stage.. To be clear he saw Biden on June 20th. He waited until
July 10th – two full weeks after the debate – to state: "He wasn't the Joe Biden of 2020. He was
the same man we all witnessed at the debate."
So you know he helped the Democrats
raise $28 million dollars that day. So he felt no remorse about taking money that
would have gone to his reelection on June 20th and telling everyone
there they'd wasted it on July 10th.
For the record he'd have done well just to tell all of those people to
save their money and of course no doubt offered everybody a full refund.
Next Clooney told us this was the
opinion of every House member and Senator he'd talked to and every governor
he'd spoken to in private. So Clooney was both protecting their confidence with
anonymity and then telling the world that that they all thought the same thing.
Clooney then says we can either put our heads in the sand and hope for a
miracle in November or we can speak the truth.
For the record, and I just think its
worth pointing out, the following November Clooney said that Harris replacing
Biden was a mistake. So just to be clear we did exactly what Clooney suggested,
we still failed to defeat Trump and now Clooney felt fine saying this one
full year after Harris had lost. Maybe for his next film role Clooney
should play Captain Obvious.
This is a moment when late night
failed to meet the moment. Every single late night host from Colbert to Kimmel
to Bill Maher should have roasted Clooney to the sky. Because Clooney made it
clear in this op-ed that while he had no real expertise in electoral politics
he'd fundraised for Democrats for years going back to Obama. This was the Times
version of that famous commercial that starts:
Do you know me? I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV." (Which in
Clooney's case was true but I wouldn't be asking him to be surgeon general.)
The parodies practically write themselves:
I'm not an expert on crime and urban
decay but as someone who played both Batman and Danny Ocean…
I'm not an expert on the Middle East
or renewable energy but having won an Academy Award for Syriana…
I don't pretend to know anything about
the Fairness Doctrine or cable news but as the writer of a film on Edward R.
Murrow…
And of course…
I may not know much of running for
President but as someone who in The Ides of March played one…
Some of you are no doubt saying that
Clooney had a right to give an opinion
and that he was more informed then most of us. There is truth to that. There's also the truth that the White House
did hide the truth about Biden's physical and mental condition and concealed it
until well past the time we could do anything to stop it. Biden does bear the
responsibility for it.
But Clooney's hands are not clean. He
could have gone before the cameras the day after the fundraiser and told the
world what he saw. That would have been an act of courage. He had an entire
week to say something that could have changed the narrative or at the very
least given the world a heads up. Instead he held his tongue and waited for at
least fifty million people watching at the time and then the rest of the
country in real time realize what he had seen.
Then he went out of his way to talk to
as many Democratic elected officials as possible. Maybe they confirmed what he
already believed, maybe he genuinely wanted to know what they thought. Whatever
the reason he spent two whole weeks before he chose to write his article in the
Times.
And let's not forget what Clooney
chose to do in the aftermath of the election. He and his family confirmed
citizenship in another country. This is something that only the very rich among
us can easily do and it confirms Clooney's elite status. He asked for Biden to
step down to save democracy and when it didn't work as he planned, he chose to
leave. It's conditional of course – he was back in Hollywood for the Golden
Globes after being nominated for Jay Kelly - but that only goes to prove a larger point.
For him the fate of American democracy
is in a sense an abstraction, something that they can afford to worry about
because they can afford to leave America. We've seen multiple celebrities from
Rosie O'Donnell to Ellen DeGeneres to Robin Wright make a similar decision and
in all those cases they've returned. Some have not been subtle about it; Wright
was at the Golden Globes as well.
That is the larger reason why I don't
think we should take celebrities advice when it comes to so many of America's
problems. It's not that they're necessarily uninformed on the subject (though
again I do think the majority are); it's because for all of them, they're like
America itself: they can take it or leave it. Those are options the majority of
the Americans who are worried about the policies of the administration (of
which I'm one) don't have.
Now I know none of that is going to
stop the rest of the world from commenting on them with superiority; I've seen
countless people do so on this site alone. I don't have a lot of respect for
them, particularly expatriates from the last decade. And it's for the same
reason I don't have any respect for celebrities when they do: both of them are
speaking 'truth to power' when they're in no position to suffer the
consequences from that very power. It doesn't take a genius that if you say
'F--- ICE at an awards speech in New York, you will get a very different
reaction then if you say it to the face of one.
And that's a big difference. I may not
agree with the protestors and I may think that they are ineffective at anything
other than 'raising awareness' but at least when they do it in a place like
Minneapolis they know what the cost is.
Mark Ruffalo isn't risking anything when he wears buttons or says the
same thing at the Golden Globes in LA. And if he really thinks the country is a
dictatorship (which if it was, he'd have been jailed as a political prisoner
years ago) he can always fly to London or Paris where many of his colleagues
have taken up dual citizenship.
Hell maybe he and the rest of them can
make a film about a bunch of handsome, well-clothed white people planning to
break into the White House and get Trump to sign a letter of resignation. Clooney
could write the screenplay and says its based on a true story. But because this
is Hollywood he could tweak the ending to make himself the hero this time.
After all, the film version usually
supplants reality.
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