George Clooney's big party for Obama in a tent — not in his house — on his basketball court.

WaPo reports:

“We raised a lot of money because everybody loves George. They like me, they love him. And rightfully so. Not only is he an unbelievable actor, but he is one of those rare individuals who is at ease with everybody. He seems to occupy a constant state of grace, and uses his extraordinary talents on behalf of something truly important.”

Clooney listened intently to the president throughout, his hands folded as if in prayer and his chin resting on them.

His famous chin. Surely, prayers prayed with hands rested upon that chin are answered.

Could you give me the street address so I can Google map the directions?

That's my response to this really cool invitation I just got in the email — I am so psyched! — from Michelle Obama:

Ann --

Barack and I know how hard so many of you are working on this campaign -- and we're grateful for it.

But sometimes you just need to have a little fun, too.

That's why I hope you'll take us up on the chance to join Barack at George Clooney's house on May 10th for what will be a pretty amazing event.

Chip in with a grassroots donation today, and you'll be automatically entered to join them:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Barack-and-George

Thanks for all you do,

Michelle

Oh, hell. Chance to join Barack... Key word: chance. Send money and you're entered in a raffle for an invitation. It's all a big crap shoot. Remember when the key word for Obama was: hope. And: change. They changed one letter in "change" and now it's: chance.  

Come on, baby, won't you take a chance...

There's another key word in that email. It's: you. In this sentence: "But sometimes you just need to have a little fun, too." Sometimes you just need to have a little fun, too. You, lowly peon, in addition to... me and my glamorous husband and my gorgeous Hollywood friend. You may need, but you're only going to get it, if you win the crap shoot, which you've got to be in to win, so give us money, because that's what we need. We have plenty of fun, and we want to have more, but we need what you have: money. Or to put that in email-friendly form: a grassroots donation.

What's grassroots about making a donation in response to the First Lady of the United States luring you to a movie star's party?

For a mere $40,000, you can sit down to dinner chez George Clooney...

... and raise money for Barack Obama.

Hey, I see from that link above, Clooney is copying Meade's beard.

Speaking of beards, we were singing "Motorpsycho Nightmare" this morning:

I had to say something
To strike him very weird
So I yelled out
“I like Fidel Castro and his beard”
Rita looked offended
But she got out of the way
As he came charging down the stairs
Sayin’, “What’s that I heard you say?”

I said, “I like Fidel Castro
I think you heard me right”
And ducked as he swung
At me with all his might
Rita mumbled something
’Bout her mother on the hill
As his fist hit the icebox
He said he’s going to kill me
If I don’t get out the door
In two seconds flat
“You unpatriotic
Rotten doctor Commie rat”

What touched us off was that story about Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen, who got suspended for 5 games for saying (supposedly) that he loves Fidel Castro.

What’s that I heard you say?

"Martin Sheen commanded the stage with his impassioned portrayal of an attorney arguing for gay-marriage rights..."

"... Jane Lynch inspired instant response as a vehement same-sex marriage opponent; Brad Pitt dazzled as a judge. It was all part of the star-studded West Coast premiere of '8,' a play about the 2010 federal court fight against Proposition 8, the gay-marriage ban that California voters approved in 2008."

Also in the performance: George Clooney, Kevin Bacon, Jamie Lee Curtis, Christine Lahti, George Takei, John C. Reilly, Chris Colfer, Matthew Morrison, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

Here, they put it on line (at least for the coming week):

George Clooney doesn't care if you think he's gay.

He says:

"I think it’s funny, but the last thing you’ll ever see me do is jump up and down saying 'These are lies!' That would be unfair and unkind to my good friends in the gay community.

"I’m not going to let anyone make it seem like being gay is a bad thing. My private life is private, and I’m very happy in it. Who does it hurt if someone thinks I’m gay? I’ll be long dead and there will still be people who say I was gay. I don’t give a s---."...

Making a comparison with Cary Grant, who some people still claim was gay, Clooney said he thought the late star "would have laughed at that and not cared what people thought."...

Rumours about Clooney's sexuality were fuelled when his friend Brad Pitt, also a campaigner in favour of same-sex marriage, joked that he would not marry his partner Angelina Jolie until Clooney could legally marry his partner.

Nice attitude. Good points.

Wes Anderson's stop-action animation movie.

Ha ha. Stop-action, not computer 3D crap, which I hate. George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray. Roald Dahl. 91% on the Tomatometer. Let's go!

That journalistic encounter in Italy.

"[E]arlier in the week at the Venice festival, an Italian journalist stripped to his skivvies, declared himself gay and begged a clearly ticked-off [George] Clooney for a kiss. Ewan McGregor, who co-stars in Goats, told USA TODAY earlier in the day,'It was a waste of everyone's time, really. When you have these big press conferences ,the trouble is, that’s it. You get the half an hour, 45 minutes, and for a lot of journalists, that is it. I don’t know what his deal was. Later on, he was following him around in a boat. I saw him later." Perhaps he was inspired by Borat's stalking of Pam Anderson.'"

There's George Clooney's double.

"I think maybe George Clooney is going to come down those stairs soon, because his double just came out. That's his double over there."

"Yeah, I thought it looked like George Clooney, but couldn't be George Clooney because the crowd didn't get excited. Plus, he's not fat."

"George Clooney isn't fat. He's got bulk."

"He's fat. A little fat. Actually, technically, he's obese."



"You know, you can wait here all day if you like, but that light is set up to shine on that window for an interior shot."

The scene on Hicks Street, yesterday, where they're filming the new Coen brothers movie, "Burn After Reading."

"I'm not going to be threatened by Arianna Huffington!"

Says George Clooney:

Yesterday, Clooney released an angry statement calling Huffington's methods "purposefully misleading," and she acknowledged that his so-called blog - slamming Dems who voted for the war in Iraq for fear of being labeled "liberal" - was actually compiled from Clooney's recent interviews with the UK's Guardian and CNN's Larry King.

But Huffington insisted (and forwarded me E-mails that seemed to back her up) that she believed she had explicit permission from one of Clooney's PR reps to publish his disparate quotes as a single piece of writing. "This was a misunderstanding," she told me yesterday, as the disputed blog was removed from her Web site.

Clooney told me: "Nobody has ever written an op-ed piece for me. If I say I've written something, I've written it. When I go to the Oscars, I write everything I say...I stand by what I do, but I'm very cautious not to take giant steps onto soapboxes because I think they're polarizing."

Clooney said that when he demanded a disclaimer from Huffington, she refused. "She told me that it's a big no-no in the blogosphere, where people are supposed to write their own pieces."

There's a minor and boring problem here: Who speaks for George Clooney? He has PR people, and if they agree to things on his behalf, and afterwards he decides he doesn't like it, it seems a bit unfair for him to portray the other party to the agreement as underhanded.

The interesting thing is that Clooney's willingness to embarrass Huffington over what his PR people did throws light on how The Huffington Post operates. Now, the celebrity blog part of the Huffington Post looks like just a PR outlet, a place for assorted quotes and press releases to assemble in the form of a blog. Why looking like a blog works as a way to win readers is something of a mystery, of course. But there are all sorts of blog-looking things out there trying to get your attention. Do they detract from real blogs? Do you know the difference between a real blog and a fake one?

Do you know the difference between a real book and a fake one?

UPDATE: Here is Arianna Huffington's explanation of her interaction with Clooney, along with various assertions about how The Huffington Posts generally gets blog posts from celebrities. The claim is that 99% of the bloggers (which includes a lot of journalists and other non-stars) type directly into the blog software, and only 1% email, fax, or phone in their material. Presumably, the big name celebrities are in the 1%.

Very, very rarely (in 10 months, it's fewer times than you can count on your hand), we will work with a first-time blogger the way editors do in other, traditional media -- suggesting ideas and offering direction on what makes a blog different from, say, a New York Times op-ed. Part of what we've always tried to do with HuffPost is bring to the blogosphere some of the most interesting voices of our time that are not already there. This is the first time there was no back and forth with the writer -- our sample was approved 'as is' -- which is where the misunderstanding occurred.

I read this as an open invitation to bloggers to find other HuffPo posts there that are cobbled together from various sources the way Clooney's was -- though we won't have any way to know if the star was involved in the approval process. I find it hard to believe that it only happened this way once and just by chance this was a person who would choose to make a public stink about it and embarrass Huffington.

MORE: An emailer writes:

I work for a Public Relations/Marketing firm.

The basic rule is that NOTHING goes out without the expressed approval of the client. When you write a statement for the client the person whose name appears on the statement personally reads and approves it. If you ghost an article for the client, the client reads and approves said article.

It is not uncommon for releases. etc. to go through 10 to 20 revisions before the client gives approval.

If things happened as described by Huffington, Clooney’s PR people did a very unprofessional job.

Yeah, it doesn't make any sense why he's pissed at her and not his own people.