Why Megyn Kelly was wrong for raking George Clooney over the coals
Hartford, Connecticut: When Megyn Kelly flayed George Clooney on her show Wednesday night, she made a serious misstep. I believe that by even discussing Clooney and his comments on 'The Megyn Kelly Show', she legitimized the political opinion of a man whose political opinions don’t matter to anyone apart from a select few elites who swim in the swamp of sycophancy while deluding themselves that their fortunes give them some sort of moral authority. It doesn’t.
Megyn Kelly was responding to a conversation the actor had with Patty LuPone. In that conversation, Clooney took umbrage with Kelly earlier stating that he was not a journalist, and hence it was quite precious of him to lecture card-carrying scribes on how to do their jobs. Kelly was right. Now, Clooney could have recognized where she was coming from, agreed with the fact that he is not a journalist, and capped it off by saying that as he is a public figure, it was his duty and right to voice an opinion. That would have ended the ‘feud’ right there. Grudging, but finished.
But no, goaded by a LuPone brimming with smug self-righteousness, Clooney went on to say that he wasn’t “quite sure what Megyn Kelly has done to be a journalist”. Clooney’s riposte was by equal measure ignorant and petty.
That fact that Clooney has probably not watched anything from Kelly’s extensive, and at times divisive (but no less relevant), journalistic repertoire, showed a man so clueless about any opinion that does not closely adhere to his blinkered view of the world, as to render him a pointless fount.
His pettiness in going after an actual journalist with a low-hanging barb showed not just someone who has no self-awareness, but one who has probably deluded himself into believing he’s an actual reporter. He’s not. His line, “I was shot at Darfur”, never happened, although a gun was put to his head by a 10-year-old child. If that makes you a war correspondent, then half of Detroit can consider themselves on the frontlines.
Clooney is a man in search of a makeover: His movie career is flagging, the lackey bump he got from his Op-Ed calling for Joe Biden to step down is fading, and he’s still clinging to the ideals he espoused in his very good film ‘Good Night and Good Luck’. And while Clooney might fancy himself as a bit of a modern Edward R Murrow, let’s be clear, Murrow was personified in that film by the absolutely brilliant David Strathairn, not Clooney. In fact, it’s safe to say that had Clooney decided to cast himself as Murrow, it would have had all the gravitas of a finch feather on a strong breeze.
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But, in spite of all of the above, Kelly should have ignored Clooney. Kelly has a real voice, with a real following. People listen to her for the woman she is, not the characters she plays on screen. By bringing Clooney into her vast domain, she has given him a voice in a space that cares little about what he does and even less about what he thinks.
All Kelly’s comments have done is give Clooney more fuel to fan the flames at the backslapping soirees he has with his blinkered chums, who in turn spoon-feed the legacy media its narrative. Which means Kelly will most likely become the cycle, not Clooney’s sanctimonious nonsense, or his blatant hypocrisy in the Joe Biden fiasco.
I am a fan of Megyn Kelly and her show, and with her seemingly fiery temper it would have been hard for her to ignore Clooney’s comments, but ignore them she should have. One does not get rid of a pesky fly by imitating its irritating buzz, but rather by just swatting it away. Megyn’s dignified silence on the issue would have been the biggest fly-swatter of them all.