Allan H. Ryskind, editor at large of Human Events, has written a penetrating analysis and expos? of the new George Clooney movie about Senator Joseph McCarthy. He writes, “If George Clooney’s ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ is the best shot the left can unload on Joe McCarthy these days, the famous Red hunter is well on his way to a thorough rehabilitation.” You can read Ryskind’s piece here.
Clooney’s father, Nick, was derided as “Looney Clooney” when he ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2004. He lost to Republican Geoff Davis. In fact, Nick Clooney was a fairly conservative Democrat. His son is the looney one.
That fact was demonstrated when CNN’s Howard Kurtz devoted part of his October 9 Reliable Sources program to an interview with George Clooney about his McCarthy movie. Kurtz, who introduced the segment by alluding to Clooney’s sex appeal, permitted the Hollywood actor to pontificate on why people are less informed than he is.
There’s a lot of information out there, Clooney conceded, but “it’s just tougher to find because there’s so many―it’s fractured in so many different pieces.” He didn’t really explain what he meant by this statement. Does he mean it’s too difficult to change a channel? Is it too difficult to turn on a radio? Is it too difficult to navigate a website or use Google? Or to subscribe to different newspapers?
Whatever his point, Kurtz wondered if Clooney wanted to “go back to the days of three broadcast networks?” Clooney replied, “I don’t know, sometimes I have a romantic vision of that, when everyone started with the same basic facts and then sort of took them into their own social and political experience, and then came up with their own opinions, so that everyone started with somewhat of the same fact base, rather than starting with very different fact levels.”
There we have it―Clooney seems to want to return to the days when Walter Cronkite was considered the most trusted man in America. It was so much simpler then. We didn’t have as many choices. Thank to Cronkite, in part, America lost in Vietnam. Those were great times, weren’t they?
Later, Clooney announced his devotion to journalism, saying that “?the most important thing, as Thomas Jefferson taught us, was he would rather have a free press than a free government.”
A free press versus a free government? Come again? What Jefferson said was that “[W]ere it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Jefferson was saying that a free press is necessary for the people to practice self-government.
On the other hand, Jefferson also said that “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.”
George Clooney is worse than looney when he decries the rise of alternative media sources and longs for the day when the three broadcasting networks dominated the media. Jefferson would be embarrassed to count Clooney as a follower. He’s basically saying he wants the people to be as confused as he is. Clooney is so badly informed that he can’t even quote Jefferson correctly. His movie about McCarthy, as Ryskind demonstrates, is equally fallacious.
Clooney may have sex appeal, but he has no brain appeal.
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