“I think Bob [Iger] displayed courage. He came out and said, okay, we’re not going to do this. We took a pause, but Jimmy’s back on the air, and he took heat for that. I see it as something to be proud of,” Clooney elaborates. “I find that we’re going to take these sort of victories for the First Amendment very seriously and celebrate them. Because there are an awful lot of people trampling on it. Now, there are a lot of similarities if you think about it. Back then, it was the second most powerful man in America. Now it’s the President of the United States trying to pressure media to censor themselves.”
The actor-director says the situation today is “the same thing” as the Hollywood Blacklist that started during the red scare: “The president is coming out, giving a bunch of names, and tons of people who are getting messages from above them say, please don’t talk about these subjects; please don’t take these subjects on,” he says. “There are great many similarities. We’ve seen some courage, but we’ve seen an awful lot of cowardice. Particularly from these rich tech guys who could do anything they want. The fact that they’re afraid that they might lose a billion out of their 400 billion dollars is pretty crazy to me. But we’ll get through it. It’s just going to be a frustrating period where trustworthy information is getting harder and harder to come by.”
It sounds like Clooney has hope that democracy will survive the beating it’s currently taking, but much like many of the late night hosts, he finds himself baffled to be agreeing with Ted Cruz on matters of free speech. “Whatever side you’re on, everyone should be very concerned about infringing on the very first amendment of the Constitution. It was put [in] there very specifically because it was important,” he says. While the excuse for cancelling Stephen Colbert was pinned on poor ratings, that argument “just doesn’t play out” in the greater context of the political climate. “It is fine for a business to say, well, we don’t want to work with them anymore because their numbers aren’t good. But you don’t fire somebody on a Wednesday because the FCC chair just said, we can do this the hard way, or we can do this the easy way,” Clooney says.
“MSNBC and Fox News should be very concerned [on] both sides of anybody saying, we’re going to pull you for the kind of information that you’re putting out.”
The fact that the most trusted voices in America are no longer journalists but comedians goes to show “how desperate we are,” Clooney says. But he praises the likes of Kimmel, Jon Stewart, and John Oliver as “really smart, funny guys who are reminding us of what we’re supposed to be, and making the argument for the importance of freedom of speech.” You can read the full interview here.
