Oh, God, while the Sony situation isn’t funny George Clooney’s reaction to it certainly is. Well, not Good Funny. This is Bad Funny… anyway, let’s go over who Clooney blames, shall we?
- The press. “They played the fiddle while Rome burned.” They should have mentioned that this was blatantly a North Korean-friendly (at least) operation, based on the very name (I freely admit that I missed the historical details behind that one).
- Trial lawyers. “[The theater chains] said they were not going to run it because they talked to their lawyers and those lawyers said if somebody dies in one of these, then you’re going to be responsible.” Those tort-obsessed trial lawyers…
- Movie executives. “They know what they themselves have written in their emails, and they’re afraid.” Clooney argued that that’s why the first wave of emails were the embarrassing ones: to keep the rest of the industry’s heads down.
- The government. “Everybody was doing their jobs, but somehow, we have allowed North Korea to dictate content, and that is just insane.” …This is as close as George Clooney will ever come to criticizing Barack Obama, and while I normally don’t grade the Left on a curve there were just too many other good bits in this interview to make me entirely merciless*.
That’s… a large cross-section of the Establishment Democrats’ supporters up there, huh? We’re just missing the academics, Big Labor, and Big Green. George Clooney thinks of all of these people as being a bunch of cowards, which is certainly true; but what he’s apparently not getting (while sounding like quite the fire-eating Republican on this issue, might I add**) is that they didn’t become cowards overnight. This is, in fact, pretty much reflective of the standard operation procedure that’s been adopted by the Other Side over the last few decades; and forgive me for saying this, but that’s why they were targeted***. Nobody over there wanted to fight.
So in the end George Clooney gets it almost right. What he fails to see is that Hollywood’s moral defeat here was inevitable, because the institutions and groups that Clooney’s spent so much time working with were not up to the task****. It is my humble suggestion that the man consider this fact in the future when deciding what kind of civic contributions he wishes to make in the future in order to better help the Republic…
Via @SonnyBunch.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*Besides, despite it all the man did still give a great performance in O Brother, Where Art Thou?. You’re just going to have to forgive me on this one.
**The rule of thumb is, You are most conservative about the things that are most important to you. It would appear that the movie industry is genuinely important to George Clooney.
***They, of course, did not deserve to be targeted: ‘the way she was dressed…’ defense is not accepted in modern society, and for good reason. But many in modern society seem to have difficulty in distinguishing between saying that a behavior is risky, and saying that the same behavior justifies a particular response.
****At this point there are probably reflexive if not outright indoctrinated responses – not all from Democrats, alas – that the Right is just as much a bunch of cowards. Far be it from me to suggest that the GOP is made up of a band of strong-jawed paladins and stalwarts. But we do know when it’s time to circle the dang wagons, and this would be one of those times.
Alright, I have some thoughts here that may be divergent from yours. It’s kind of a long and winding thought, so bear with me (or not, I guess you’re under no obligation to care).
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Let’s first go back to 1800 and the war against the Barbary pirates, because history likes to be a repeating theme. The North African nations were harassing merchant shipping and very quickly got the new USA pissed off enough that we built a navy from scratch and engaged in some very beneficial gunnbarrel diplomacy.
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This was not the fault of the US merchant ships or the companies running them and it was not cowardice to surrender to pirates that had every advantage over them.
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Companies have a responsibility to protect themselves as they are able (a bank can hire a guard), but ultimately they can’t stand up to entire countries or well funded or organized villains forever.
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Now we’re in a cyber age and the bad actor nations or groups don’t have to be physically present to threaten. You don’t have to have company assets off the coast of North Africa or to be threatened.
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Sony had what it considered to be credible threats made against it and it’s customers and made the safe call. This is in the same way a bank teller may hand over money to a robber who only claims to have a gun, but never shows it.
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Ultimately, it is the government’s job to protect its merchants from being pushed around by foreign actors. If somebody pushes one of your companies down, you build the USS Fricking Constitution and kick their asses for it. You don’t blame the company for not having the strength of character to stare down a gun barrel.
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In this case, it was a Japanese company that was attacked. This is sort of like pirates attacking a Japanese flagged merchant vessel, so this may effect our direct response somewhat. We definitely need to take this as a wake-up call and build better cyber defenses and/or cyber responses and be ready to punch back with shock and awe when an American company is threatened or attacked. We can punch back using similar techniques or, you know, physical bullets still work too.
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Ultimately, it’s up to the government (police, NSA, FBA, CIA, the military, whatever) to PROTECT COMMERCE. It’s one of the few actual real things they are supposed to be doing.
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As an unrelated aside, studio executives deserve every bit of embarrassment they are receiving over their leaked Emails. I don’t send Emails to MY coworkers complaining about what dumbasses my other coworkers are, even when it’s true. Show a little professionalism people, even when no one is looking.
I have some sympathy for Sony. I have remarkably less for Paramount, because they caved instinctively, before anybody even looked at them funny.
Don’t worry. Sooner or later, George will find a way to blame Republicans (Preferably George Bush), his reality filter will update, reboot and then all will be fine in his view.
Clooney should have gotten his good friend O’bama to sign the petition.
While it’s obvious people aren’t fans of Clooney, we should at least give him some credit. He’s displaying more sense at the moment than most people in Hollywood.
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Whether or not he becomes Conservative, well in my view the jury is out, but I’m not going to knock him for taking a step in the right direction just cause he didn’t go as far as we would like.
I predict Sony Pictures will be bankrupt within a year. After this who’s going to trust them. They may have chosen the worst possible response.