CLOONEY AND HOLLYWOOD "PROUD TO BE OUT OF TOUCH" WITH THE TRUTH

George Clooney accepting his actor in a supporting role Oscar® for ‘Syriana’:

“Wow. All right, so I'm not a winning director… I would say that, you know, we are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while. I think it's probably a good thing. We're the ones who talked about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasn't really popular. And we, you know, we bring up subjects. This Academy, this group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I'm proud to be a part of this Academy, proud to be part of this community, and proud to be out of touch.”

[More on CLOONEY here and HERE.]

POWERLINE:

The movie for which Clooney received an award, Syrianna, isn't out of touch with America because it is morally superior; it is out of touch because it is mind-numbingly dumb. A film that takes the position that suicide bombers are good, America is controlled by corrupt oilmen, and the United States is the force that stands in the way of Middle Eastern democracy, isn't just out of touch with America. It's out of touch with reality. Which probably explains, at least in part, why it was a dud.

KRAUTHAMMER:

The most pernicious element in the movie is the character who is at the moral heart of the film: the physically beautiful, modest, caring, generous Pakistani who becomes a beautiful, modest, caring, generous ... suicide bomber. In his final act, the Pure One, dressed in the purest white robes, takes his explosives-laden little motorboat head first into his target. It is a replay of the real-life boat that plunged into the USS Cole in 2000, killing 17 American sailors, except that in ``Syriana's'' version, the target is another symbol of American imperialism in the Persian Gulf -- a newly opened liquefied natural gas terminal....

I used to think that Hollywood had achieved its nadir with Oliver Stone's ``JFK,'' a film that taught a generation of Americans that President Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA and the FBI in collaboration with Lyndon Johnson. But at least it was for domestic consumption, an internal affair of only marginal interest to other countries. ``Syriana,'' however, is meant for export, carrying the most vicious and pernicious mendacities about America to a receptive world.

Most liberalism is angst- and guilt-ridden, seeing moral equivalence everywhere. ``Syriana'' is of a different species entirely -- a pathological variety that burns with the certainty of its malign anti-Americanism. Osama bin Laden could not have scripted this film with more conviction.

RELIAPUNDIT: (1) Clooney LIED when he made Murrow central to McCarthy's downfall. He obscurred the truth that Murrow was an anti-communist too - but one who didn't like McCarthy's tactics or style. (2) Clooney's LIED when he made the CIA agent he played in Syriana come under FBI investigation for being pro-Arab; in fact, Baer - the author of the book on which Syriana was ostensibly based, and the person Clooney's character was based on - was a hawk who wanted the USA to get tougher on the jihadoterrorists of Hizballah, not an appeasing dove.

These DELIBERATE LIES AND DISTORTIONS denigrate the USA and elevate the Left; they alter reality and serve the enemies of America.

That Clooney and Hollywood don't see it that way only proves how out of touch they are - NOT out of touch with the ignorant cretins of middle-America, but out of touch with reality, out of touch with any committment to tell the truth.

HEY CLOONEY: If reality and truth are antithetical to your politics, maybe you should change your politics, instead of LYING!? HEY CLOONEY: If you can't win an argument unless you lie, then maybe you're arguing the WRONG side of the controversy?!

UPDATE:

The idea that it is brave to stand up for gays in Hollywood, to stand up against Joe McCarthy in Hollywood (fifty years after his death), to say that rich white people are bad, that oil companies are evil -- this is nonsense.

All of these are mainstream ideas in Hollywood, always have been, always will be. For the people who made movies denouncing Big Oil, worshiping gays, mocking the rich to think of themselves as brave -- this is pathetic, childish narcissism. ...

Hollywood is above all about self: self-congratulation, self-promotion, and above all, self-protection. This is human and basic, but let's not kid ourselves. There is no greatness there in the Kodak theater. The greatness is on patrol in Kirkuk. The greatness lies unable to sleep worrying about her man in Mosul. The greatness sleeps at Arlington National Cemetery and lies waiting for death in VA Hospitals. God help us that we have sunk so low as to confuse foolish and petty boasting with the real courage that keeps this nation and the many fools in it alive and flourishing on national TV.

That's PURE GENIUS from Ben Stein. (Via DPGI)