We’ve noted how the Media Research Center raged against CNN airing a performance of the Broadway production “Good Night, and Good Luck,” starring George Clooney. It turns out it bashed the play itself before that. Alex Christy groused in a Feb. 19 post that “Actor George Clooney traveled over to CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday to promote the stage adaptation of his 2005 movie Good Night, and Good Luck about Edward R. Murrow and McCarthyism. With modern-day politics an obvious backdrop, Clooney urged journalists to be on the ‘right side of history’ even if it ‘is not fun at the moment.'”
Christian Toto spent a Feb. 22 column using the play to attack Clooney for not immediately making a big deal out of President Biden’s “cognitive decline”:
Most Americans understand the legacy press no longer holds one party accountable for its actions. Reporters ignored President Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline, for example. Journalists also refused to cover the Hunter Biden laptop scandal until months after the 2020 presidential election wrapped.
Even then, the coverage proved muted and ineffective. Some truths must be hidden, apparently.
The same, apparently, applies to Clooney.
The actor appeared alongside President Biden last June for a 2024 fundraising rally. The event funneled $30 million into the Commander in Chief’s coffers.
The gala did more than that. It gave Clooney a close-up view of Biden’s cognitive decline. It wasn’t a “cheap fake” attack by his political adversaries.
It was real.
Yet Clooney said nothing for weeks following the fundraiser, keeping the critical truth to himself. Only when Biden’s poll numbers dipped following his disastrous June 27 debate did Clooney open up about the situation.
[…]America badly needed the Fourth Estate when one party covered up their leader’s obvious senility. They stood down instead.
So did Clooney until it became convenient to speak up.
Tim Graham used a March 24 post to whine that “60 Minutes” aired “a 13-minute puff piece on Democrat activist and actor George Clooney, now making a Broadway play out of his CBS-mythologizing movie Good Night and Good Luck,” adding:
The truth gets mangled early on in this segment. Wertheim explained about Sen. Joseph McCarthy: “At the height of the Red Scare, the Wisconsin senator led a crusade to weed out supposed communist infiltration of the U.S. government.”
Supposed? We’re not in the 1950s any more. Anyone who’s read the Venona papers knows the Soviet Union infiltrated the U.S. government, including Alger Hiss, who the Clooney types pretended was innocent for decades. This is the myth that CBS and Clooney are still promoting, that they were on the “right side of history” as they were gaslighting and getting it wrong about Soviet espionage.
Then, inevitably, they have to somehow put Donald Trump into the villainous Joe McCarthy role of battling the heroic leftist crusaders of the press. No one asked a question about whether the press should be fair, or balanced, or objective.
Graham never demands that Fox News or other right-wing media be fair, or balanced, or objective, so he’s the wrong person to make that argument. Instead, he further huffed that “In this segment, Wertheim lets Clooney the Truth-Teller claim he just had to come out in favor of Biden stepping down last July — after the debate debacle, weeks after Clooney witnessed feeble Biden up close at a fundraiser.”
Toto returned for an April 26 column gushing over Megyn Kelly for melting down over Clooney saying that she wasn’t a real journalist:
Megyn Kelly counter-punches with the best of ’em.
The former Fox News superstar is now a media darling of her own creation. “The Megyn Kelly Show,” heard on SiriusXM and podcasting platforms across the globe, lets her weigh in on the latest headlines and often makes news, too.
One bonus? She has a massive platform from which to fight back against progressive smears.
She did just that regarding George Clooney’s Variety chat with Broadway star Patti LuPone. The duo dressed Kelly down in their recent conversation, suggesting she’s not a “real” journalist.
Clooney is starring in Broadway’s Good Night, and Good Luck, the theatrical adaptation of his 2005 film on the professional life of Edward R. Murrow.
“Clooney fancies himself a journalist, you see, and has lots of thoughts on how journalists need to do journalism,” Kelly said, kicking off her April 23 broadcast. “Like he does it, mainly, stumbling upon the biggest story of the decade – that a sitting president is mentally infirm and ought to be 25th Amendmented right out of office and then burying it, saying absolutely nothing for weeks on end.”
She’s right, of course.
“That’s not journalism, George. That’s cowardice, followed by naked partisanship,” Kelly said.
Toto then dutifully repeated the “impressive list of accomplishments” Kelley rattled off that supposedly proved her “journalistic bona fides” — which appeared to mostly be her doing her assigned job at Fox News, not engaging in any actual journalism.