On June 7th, tomorrow night, CNN will air its first ever play, George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck.
This would be great if not for the obvious fact that George Clooney is a hypocrite and a coward. Sorry, but these are the ugly facts. He said nothing, not one word, for the past ten years as writers, teachers, journalists, actors all lost their jobs when the mob came for them. He said nothing when the mob came for me just last year. Said nothing when Disney fired Gina Carano for a joke on Twitter. Said nothing when Donald McNeil was fired from the New York Times because some entitled, privileged brat called him a racist.
He said nothing about how Bari Weiss and James Bennett were chased out of the New York Times after an essay by Tom Cotton. He has said not one word about any of it, not what’s happened to Hollywood since 2016, not what happened to Hollywood in 2020, not the Federal government censoring speech on social media, not for people losing their jobs for thought crimes even in — especially in — the Biden era.
The film critic Sean O’Connell made the mistake of writing an honest review of the Pixar movie Seeing Red. He was swarmed and attacked and forced to not only take down the review but apologize profusely. Why? Because he knew he would lose his job otherwise, just like Patti Lupone knows, and like George Clooney knows. He is no Edward R. Murrow, that’s for sure. That would require the kind of courage most aren’t prepared for.
I watched my friend Jeff Wells speak his mind and refuse to bow to the mob again and again. They punished him by getting kicked out of various film festivals, not advertising on his site, and not inviting him to screenings. The few studios that advertise here show the kind of bravery and courage Clooney never could or ever would display.
David Mamet is among the most important voices in American history—in theater, film, culture, and politics. He has been unpersoned by Hollywood. And sure, like me, he can still exist in the world. We’re not living in 1984 because we are still free to say and do as we please, though we have been banished to the outer region with the Proles.
To spare themselves that, people like Clooney have shut up and stayed silent for ten years, pretending to be the good guys, playing Edward R. Murrow, of all people, on Broadway and now CNN. But because so many of them have been scared into silence, the truth never comes out. No wonder so many of them are so delusional about what’s happened to the film industry and to journalism in the last ten years. If no one is around to be honest with you, how can you ever know the truth?
Clooney worked with the writer Walter Kirn on the film Up in the Air. Kirn spoke out, spoke honestly and found himself exiled by the Good People of the Left. Clooney played nice, stayed silent, pandered, went along with it and now everyone is supposed to applaud him and punish Kirn. If Clooney had spent more time listening to Walter Kirn – maybe listening to the America This Week podcast, maybe he’d be able to show some real courage.
I also can’t help but think of my friend David Carr, who died before this madness took hold. Carr would have been canceled, I feel sure, because of what he admitted to in his book on the abuse of women. I feel sure he would have been fired by the New York Times because of it, and I feel sure George Clooney, his good friend, would have said nothing. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. But I only met Clooney once when David Carr invited me to watch him interview him. I would like to think Carr would have been the Edward R. Murrow that Clooney wasn’t. But I don’t know. Fear does strange things to people.
It’s bad enough that Clooney said nothing, but it’s even worse that he’s distorting and shape-shifting history to pretend he’s standing up for journalism by showing his play on CNN. Does he not know what McCarthyism was actually about? He thinks what Trump is doing now is McCarthyism. But no one would get fired for saying so on cable news and he knows that.
McCarthyism is what the FBI would call an “All of Society” effort to rid the nation of Communist infiltration. The Conservatives had control of everything in post-war America back then, like the Left did in the Obama era, but especially with the fake “resistance” formed in 2016 where the richest and most powerful people cosplayed victimhood and oppression, people like George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen, Rob Reiner, Barbra Streisand, Larry David. All of Hollywood because it was an “all of society” effort to rid America of Trumpism — which in the minds of the Left means: racist, mostly, but also homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, etc.
An “All of society” effort means everyone – every institution of culture, every corporation, every university, all of the power had to be involved OR ELSE. The FBI’s “All of Society” effort was to win hearts and minds. That meant neighbors spying on neighbors, ratting everyone out for BEING ONE OF THOSE THINGS. It’s detailed beautifully in this episode of American History Storytellers – Hearts and Minds.
Our “all of society” effort was multi-tiered. The mob on Twitter accused someone, swarmed them, destroyed their reputations, and the institutions obeyed. Cancel culture wasn’t just a dust-up on Twitter. It meant someone had to be sacrificed. Who would be next? No one knew for sure then, and now. It has become official policy on the Left, not the Right.
Just look at what happened to me. I made a joke on Twitter that went viral because the mob thought it was “white supremacist.” That got the attention of Rebecca Keegan at the Hollywood Reporter, who wrote a hit piece on me. The day it broke, studios pulled their ads, and I became persona non grata – someone who has been in the industry for 25 years.
That didn’t matter. I was kicked out of the Patron’s Brunch at Telluride, along with all of my staff. My ticket to the Oscars was yanked – can’t have a heretic mingling among the special people – the Women’s Media Center did not invite me back to write their annual report on women and the Oscar nominations. Studios quietly closed their doors. I had done a crime, you see, a thought crime. I was saying the wrong things. I was now branded “toxic.” An “all of society” effort was enacted to purge the village of its invaders.
But I was a pariah among my peers before that because I was pushing back against cancel culture and everyone who reads this site knows it. I moved over to Trump when I believed the Left had become too powerful and that “cancel culture” had now gotten into government, and things were getting scary. It wasn’t only that, but that was a big part of it. In the end, I could not stay silent. I had to be truthful, no matter the cost.
Very few people have stood up and shown courage—very few. Lionel Shriver talks about why on the Triggernometry podcast.
So go ahead and watch Good Night, and Good Luck. Just understand that Edward R. Murrow was a hero who risked everything to speak out against an oppressive force in American life. George Clooney, however, is the opposite of that. He chose to remain silent, as most of Hollywood has …for shame.
