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My first thought when I heard that a certain movie star had written an op-ed in The New York Times telling Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race was: “Well of course Joe will step down now that Amal’s husband told him to.” It was facetious. But it also managed to kill two birds with one stone.

Three, I suppose, if you count Biden. George Clooney is a famous actor. He has an Oscar.



He peddles tequila with Cindy Crawford’s husband. He dabbles in politics. He’s probably a billionaire, if not a multi-millionaire.

And because of that last attribute, he pours money into social causes, turning him into a human rights dilettante. Let’s say that one of his recurring roles, between his occasional reunions with Julia Roberts, is a very affluent Albert Schweitzer. The one notable difference is that instead of living in harsh conditions and dealing up close with the subjects of his pseudo-colonial largesse, he dispenses mercy from behind the gates of his various fortresses in Italy, France and LA.

The second stone is his wife Amal, née Alamuddin, a Lebanese British international lawyer who, as Vogue and all of the fashion rags tell us in the articles about her red-carpet outfits, specializes in human rights. Mrs. Clooney actually does have a pretty impressive resume when it comes to her legal work, having represented a Nobel Peace Prize winner along with Julian Assange.

Still, few of us knew who she was, even those of us who regularly handle asylum and refugee cas.

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