Clooney: I Did Not Blog That
George Clooney says that the recent Huffington Post piece that bore his name was not written or authorized by him, according to a report by LAT Style columnist Elizabeth Snead.
Oscar-winner George Clooney may make politically provocative films like “Syriana.” But he doesn’t write politically provocative blogs. So imagine his ire when Arianna Huffington used some of his recent answers to political questions in a way that makes it look as if he wrote one for her Huffington Post blog site.
“He doesn’t object to the quotes,” says Stan Rosenfield, Clooney’s rep. “He said those things and those are his views. Arianna asked for permission to use the quotes and he gave it to her. What he didn’t give permission for was the use of his quotes without source attributions to make it appear that he wrote a blog for her site. Which he did not. When he saw the posting Monday, we called and asked her to make the change, to simply attribute the quotes and make it clear that he did not write a blog. But she refused. And it’s now Wednesday.”
Rather than keep waiting, Clooney got pro-active and issued this statement: “Miss Huffington’s blog is purposefully misleading and I have asked her to clarify the facts. I stand by my statements but I did not write this blog. With my permission Miss Huffington compiled it from interviews with Larry King and The Guardian. What she most certainly did not get my permission to do is to combine only my answers in a blog that misleads the reader into thinking that I wrote this piece. These are not my writings – they are answers to questions and there is a huge difference.”
Agreed. And my inclination is to believe Clooney on this one.
Hat tip: Florida Masochist
Update: Ariana Huffington claims Clooney’s rep approved the post.
A publicist who was working on the promotion of Good Night, and Good Luck, emailed back saying, “I will get it to him and get back to you as soon as I hear anything.” Three days later, she emailed again, approving, without any changes, what we had sent: “Of course this is fine, Arianna!”
And once we had the approval, that’s what we ran: George Clooney’s words put into blog form.
This was an honest misunderstanding. But any misunderstanding that occurred, occurred between Clooney and the publicist.
This was a blog post signed “George Clooney.” It was not represented as something written by HuffPo and then run by a publicist. I call B.S.
I have approximately zero respect for Clooney, but what HuffPo did to him stinks. Even he deserves better.
Truly strange. Why didn’t she get permission to use his quotes? He obviously believes these things, so why on earth did Huffington rip him off, passing herself off as Clooney? Surely, had she asked, he would have at least agreed to be quoted.
Even quoting under her name to make a point would have been good. They could have even linked to the articles where he said those things. To pretend to be Clooney is really strange.
Well then. It’s good to see some sense of uproar in Hollywood.
Why did a bunch of comments get deleted?
So are you saying there are things on Huffington post actually written by the “star” and not a PR flack? Now I have to call BS on you.
That Huffington would pull this kind of a stunt tells me all my expectations of her have been fufilled.
That others so easily think the same way tells me I’ve been far from alone in this.
That so many would think Clooney would be stupid enough to write this, tells me I’m far from alone in my assessment of him, too.
That these are *all* people with, shall we say, less than a full rack of chips, seems unquestionable.
The one point that confuses me, is, someone usually doesn’t pull a stunt like this unless they figure there’s something to gain, either personally, or politically. Further, they must have known that Clooney would have denied the article was his.
So, who gained by this series of events?