CBS loves to pose as the opponents of propaganda and misinformation, but when it comes to their own long history of making propaganda, they can only glorify themselves. On Sunday's 60 Minutes, they aired a 13-minute puff piece on Democrat activist and actor George Clooney, now making a Broadway play out of his CBS-mythologizing movie Good Night and Good Luck.
CBS interviewer Jon Wertheim made a disclosure early in this puff piece about his work with Clooney and his partner Grant Heslov: "Full disclosure, the three of us collaborated on an unrelated sports documentary out later this year."
The truth gets mangled early on in this segment. Wertheim explained about Sen. Joseph McCarthy: "At the height of the Red Scare, the Wisconsin senator led a crusade to weed out supposed communist infiltration of the U.S. government."
Supposed? We're not in the 1950s any more. Anyone who's read the Venona papers knows the Soviet Union infiltrated the U.S. government, including Alger Hiss, who the Clooney types pretended was innocent for decades. This is the myth that CBS and Clooney are still promoting, that they were on the "right side of history" as they were gaslighting and getting it wrong about Soviet espionage.
Then, inevitably, they have to somehow put Donald Trump into the villainous Joe McCarthy role of battling the heroic leftist crusaders of the press. No one asked a question about whether the press should be fair, or balanced, or objective. The movie and the play get to make wild caricatures out of history -- Clooney Toons -- and the segment lets Clooney constantly pose as The Man Who Loves Truth during "chilling times" for the media:
CBS’s @60Minutes uses George Clooney’s Edward Murrow v Joseph McCarthy play to discredit Trump’s lawsuit. @jon_wertheim: “Clooney...wasted no time addressing what he sees as the parallels to today.”
— Brent Baker 🇺🇲🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) March 24, 2025
Clooney: “When the other three states fail, when the judiciary and executive and… pic.twitter.com/DnokteKudx
Clooney lectured his fellow Democrats on the set: "When the other three estates fail, when the judiciary and the executive and the legislative branches fail us, the Fourth Estate has to succeed,” Clooney said. “ABC has just settled a lawsuit with the Trump administration. And CBS News is in the process … We’re seeing this idea of using government to scare or fine or use corporations — to make journalists smaller.”
Wertheim didn't even say the name Kamala Harris as he briefly summarized: Trump sued "making the unfounded allegation that CBS engaged in election interference."
Unfounded? CBS sliced and diced its Harris interview to make her look better. CBS always engages in election interference. There's no movie or Broadway play about Dan Rather using phony documents to try and ruin President George W. Bush on 60 Minutes II in 2004.
Clooney added: “Governments don’t like the freedom of the press. They never have. And that goes for whether you are a conservative or a liberal or whatever side you’re on. They don’t like the press."
In Clooney's mythology, the press has to be on the Left, or it's not honest, and is succumbing to corporate interference. The Left has to wage war on its enemies, and call it journalism:
WERTHEIM: What does this play tell us about the media's ability or willingness to withstand this kind of pressure?
CLOONEY: It's a fight that is for the ages. It will continue. You see it happening at the L.A. Times. You see it happening at The Washington Post, for God's sake.
CLOONEY, in the play: You guaranteed that Corporate would have no influence over news content.
CLOONEY: Journalism and telling truth to power has to be waged like war is waged. It doesn't just happen accidentally. You know, it takes people saying we're going to do these stories, and you're going to have to come after us. And that's the way it is.
CBS never wages war on the Democrats. In this segment, Wertheim lets Clooney the Truth-Teller claim he just had to come out in favor of Biden stepping down last July -- after the debate debacle, weeks after Clooney witnessed feeble Biden up close at a fundraiser.
But 60 Minutes recorded several softball interviews with President Biden, and we can be certain they carefully edited them to make him look good -- just as they did for Kamala. Just as they did for Obama. Just as they did for Clinton. Just as they did for Carter. This is why we call them "Syrupy Minutes."
