“If George Clooney is influencing Americans…” by Daniel Guss
Don't buy the shock that he and the swells are selling. This is all about face-saving, not democracy-saving. It's about their future, not ours.
I have questions, given the sudden feeding frenzy surrounding George Clooney’s New York Times opinion piece about Joe Biden needing to drop out of the presidential race.
Like, if he thinks that Biden can’t win re-election, does he believe that he can still finish-out his term as president? Job yes, but campaign no? And if the president is so addled, who exactly is running the government outside of the hours of 10am and 4pm?
For chrissake, intermittent fasting hours have bigger windows!
But George Clooney and his fellow swells, man, they didn’t know a thing about Biden’s condition until just now.
You buy that?
Because that’s what they’re selling.
In Clooney’s manifesto, this sentence caught my attention: “This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and Congress member and governor who I’ve spoken with in private.”
We can skip over clumsy writing errors, like implying that senators are not members of Congress, because if someone has Clooney-level clout, they can be published in The Old Gray Lady without someone catching that.
Upper chamber, say hello to lower chamber.
But Clooney is a big player who has rubbed elbows with the DC swells for a long time. However many times he traveled to DC, or around the world, and hosted political or humanitarian fundraisers (undoubtedly on pollution-free private jets…) and discussed these issues with media swells, did he not speak with anyone who saw how badly Biden was struggling?
Nobody?
If you buy that, then git along, little horsie…
Clooney didn’t discuss Biden’s condition with his spouse, Amal Clooney, a player on the big stage herself, as an international human rights lawyer, before co-hosting a swells-only fundraiser for him? Did the subject not come-up with Barry O. over sammiches and beer?
You buy that?
This is all about face-saving, not democracy-saving.
Wherever you are on the political spectrum, if you’re not a swell (or a swell-adjacent), they think so little of us, the hoi polloi, of our day-to-day struggles, that if they just put out whatever crap may be on their mind, we’ll buy it because they assume that they are smart because they are successful… or wealthy… or powerful… or visible.
Nothing, absolutely nada, could be further from the truth.
But they believe it.
That’s why politicians and the media know that if they just reiterate the same repetitive comment, we will soak-up their views, whether you “identify as…” libtard, snowflake, beta and cuck or as mega-MAGA, ultra-MAGA or just run-of-the-mill MAGA, when most of us reside somewhere comfortably in the middle, straddling the center on most issues.
But on Joe Biden, they’re just lying through their teeth, as usual. The end justifying the means.
Clooney isn’t the only swell who gets a benefit of the doubt for dubious claims. Remember the cringe Whoopi Goldberg suggestion on The View that “Dr.” Jill Biden should be Surgeon General?
Like most of you, this column loathes conspiracy theories — of any political ilk — like the bogus Trump Russia collusion storyline, and the debunked Hunter Biden laptop isn’t his claim. The Red-types have Q, Alex Jones and on-down-the-line. But has anyone wondered why the Biden-Harris campaign scheduled a debate with Trump so far ahead of the parties’ nominating conventions?
Was the president sabotaged because his own people knew Biden, who won the overwhelming majority of Dem delegates fair and square, would need a cataclysmic incident like the debate to consider giving them up?
Well, I shouldn’t say fair and square, since the Dem primary order was rigged in his favor, if you recall.
Still, the earliest-ever presidential debate would afford them plenty of time to nudge-away him and Kamala Harris and go with their drooling crush, Gavin Newsom, who as I pointed out recently, is a wealthy, white, hetero male who cheated on his wife. #Ironic
Biden’s people swim in the same swampy puddle as the engineers of those other scandals, and knew Trump would accept their take-it or leave-it debate invitation.
They had to have known that Biden’s travel schedule and debate prep would fail him on a spectacular level, and it did. So did every member of the media.
They too are the smart ones “saving democracy,” right?
Maybe not, because despite it all, Biden hangs in there.
As he should.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards in June ‘23. Last month, he won its “Best Commentary, Non-Political” award. He has contributed to CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)