Mea Culpa? Try Mea Assa!

"You can call George Clooney an Oscar winner. You can call him a liberal. Just don't call him a blogger.The celebrity-populated Huffington Post has removed the actor's riff on lily-livered Democrats after the star complained the site misrepresented him as one of its bloggers.According to a statement Wednesday, Clooney said Arianna Huffington, the site's namesake and political pundit, cobbled together sound bites from Larry King Live and quotes from London's Guardian for an entry, "George Clooney: I Am a Liberal. There, I Said It!," that was published Monday."These are not my writings. They are answers to questions, and there is a huge difference," Clooney said.To the New York Daily News, Clooney was blunt: "I feel abused," he said.The Clooney entry made headlines for its frank assessment of ostensive opposition party leadership in the run-up to theIraq war: "We knew the link betweenSaddam Hussein andOsama bin Laden was bulls--t. Which is why it drives me crazy to hear all these Democrats saying, 'We were misled.' It makes me want to shout, 'F--k you, you weren't misled. You were afraid of being called unpatriotic.' "Clooney hasn't disavowed the sentiment, but he did demand Huffington publish a disclaimer, he told the Daily News."She told me that it's a big no-no in the blogosphere, where people are supposed to write their own pieces," Clooney said in the newspaper.For her part, Huffington insists the blog imbroglio was the result of "an honest misunderstanding" among those in Clooney's camp.In a post Wednesday, Huffington wrote that the Clooney entry went live "only after we received written approval from his representative to do so."Huffington admitted that, yes, her team pieced together the item from old interviews. But before the so-called "sample blog" was published, she wrote, it was reviewed and okayed by a publicist for Clooney's Oscar-nominated Best Picture entry, Good Night, and Good Luck."Any misunderstanding that occurred, occurred between Clooney and the publicist," Huffington wrote. "We based our decision to post on the unambiguous approval we received in writing."In another Huffington Post entry, movie producer Jane Hamsher wrote that she was with Huffington the night her Web host recruited Clooney to join the blogging world. "And the conversation went down as she describes it today," she wrote.Hamsher openly wondered if Clooney distanced himself from his byline because he "got spooked [by] Fox News" or because "he just doesn't know his office bungled the communique."In the Daily News, Clooney spoke of being studied--not skittish. "I stand by what I do," he said in the newspaper. "But I'm very cautious not to take giant steps onto soapboxes, because I think they're polarizing."Huffington seemed sensitive to the target that is the Hollywood star on a soapbox, telling the Los Angeles Times she held off on posting the Clooney item until after theAcademy Awards.Clooney, who was up for threeOscars claimed the Best Supporting Actor trophy for the political thriller Syriana.The Huffington Post launched last year. While the likes ofGwyneth Paltrow and Warren Beatty haven't blogged there yet, as advance publicity buzzed they would, the likes of John Cusack, Larry David, Al Franken, director Nora Ephron andBillMaher have.If you're awaiting the next contribution from George Clooney, don't hold your breath.Telling the Daily News that Huffington had all but threatened him over their fracas, Clooney retorted: "Well, screw you!"

i'd like to start by saying that clooney is a big poopie head. i take back everything i said about he and i being almost exactly alike (i.e. the good looks, the schwing and all that). and i will not, repeat will not, be erasing his blog from my blog just because he didn't actually say the stuff yet. i will not participate in revisionist history even if the initial piece was made from cloth as of now. that doesn't matter. what does matter is that he might have said it at some point in the future, which further in the future would be the past, which would then mean that he indeed would have been going to say it already and had. just because he didn't say it then doesn't make it any less future true.there. i feel vindicated for the things that may happen without my knowing them yet.