Clooney tunes

Radio National's Fran Kelly could barely contain her excitement this morning as she played an excerpt from an interview between ABC's Julie Rigg and...George Clooney!

George was of course promoting his new film Goodnight and Good Luck, about Edward R. Murrow and Joe McCarthy. He was fairly sensible, and amusingly self-deprecating: as he put it, the worst thing that had happened to him was that he'd appeared in a 'liberal traitors' deck of cards, and not even as an Ace. He accepted that if you speak out on controversial matters, you've got to expect to be criticized, and he had never suffered anything comparable to blacklisting and the HUAC.

However, at this point Julie Rigg focused her laser-like antipodean insight (quote from memory):
"Yes, but you're protected by celebrity...you won't be hauled off for giving aid and comfort to the enemy".

Yes, that's right Julie. The only reason George isn't in an orange jumpsuit right now, hoeing turnips in a slave labour camp in Idaho or Nebraska, is his celebrity.