George Clooney Joins Blogosphere, Immediately Outs Himself
Black and White Clooney, perhaps bitter about being shut out at the Oscars while showier twin Fat Clooney walked away with the Best Supporting Actor trophy and needing to feel a little more loved, today joined Arianna Huffington's stable of celebrity bloggers by proudly outing himself...as a liberal. [Ed.note—Gasp! But he looks so normal!] Writes the HuffPo's highest-profile Hollywood recruit:
I am a liberal. And I make no apologies for it. Hell, I'm proud of it.
Too many people run away from the label. They whisper it like you'd whisper "I'm a Nazi." Like it's dirty word. But turn away from saying "I'm a liberal" and it's like you're turning away from saying that blacks should be allowed to sit in the front of the bus, that women should be able to vote and get paid the same as a man, that McCarthy was wrong, that Vietnam was a mistake. And that Saddam Hussein had no ties to al-Qaeda and had nothing to do with 9/11.
This is an incredibly polarized time (wonder how that happened?). But I find that, more and more, people are trying to find things we can agree on. And, for me, one of the things we absolutely need to agree on is the idea that we're all allowed to question authority. We have to agree that it's not unpatriotic to hold our leaders accountable and to speak out.
That's one of the things that drew me to making a film about Murrow. When you hear Murrow say, "We mustn't confuse dissent with disloyalty" and "We can't defend freedom at home by deserting it at home," it's like he's commenting on today's headlines.
We applaud Clooney's bravery in finally speaking publicly about his political leanings, as no one respects a closet case who pretends to be stepping out to watch some Fox News at the corner bar, then spends the whole night cruising around and making breathless phonecalls to Air America from a dimly lit parking lot.