Matt Damon and George Clooney Tossed Softballs by Strahan

Matt Damon and George Clooney are out there promoting Suburbicon, which nobody will see because it’s not inherently a movie most people want to see and its Rotten Tomatoes score is sagging fast. The box office double death knell for a Coen Brothers movie.

Damon and Clooney are hot items to talk about the Weinstein scandal in Hollywood. Both knew Weinstein quite well. Clooney having acted in multiple Weinstein produced movies, and the two traveling and donating and guffawing in the same Clinton and Obama circles for many years. As for Damon, Weinstein essentially made him famous, with a multi-picture deal as a twenty-something in the mid-90’s. 

Damon and Clooney put on their stoic acting face and arranged an interview with Michael Strahan on Good Morning America. Strahan makes Larry King look like an Inquisition judge by comparison. If Strahan were interviewing Al Baghdadi, he’d ask him his favorite flavor of hummus and follow up with a knee slap when Baghdadi said hummus gave him gas. 

Strahan provided the A-listers the chance to explain away why they either weren’t sure what Weinstein was up to for two decades of knowing him, or they knew, but they didn’t think it was anything as bad as it turned out to be. Waver a little, it seems like you’re telling the truth when you add subtleties and cop to a little. 

Damon’s ignorance of the sexually predatory nature of Weinstein has been called into question since revealed that Affleck had told him years ago about that time Harvey Weinstein tried to force Paltrow into massages in his hotel room in exchange for some big movie breaks.

“Ben told me, but I knew that they had come to whatever, you know, agreement or understanding that they had come to, she had handled it.”

That’s sort of different than not knowing what went down. Is that the kind of story you forget about a guy making your career at the moment? Nah, but Strahan didn’t feel a need to press. Damon sputtered out some lines that went over well during rehearsal:

“When people say ‘everybody knew’  – Yeah, I knew he was an asshole. He was proud of that. That’s how he carried himself. And I knew he was a womanizer. I wouldn’t want to be married to the guy. But that’s not my business.”

It’s probably not your business. But now you’re saying you should’ve known and done tons of things when you had the chance. So, it is your business?

Clooney followed with a politician type stance about stopping these evil men, bringing the light of day on all the facts, and making the world safe for women again. Vague enough that you couldn’t possibly disagree, but without any sort of active tense responsibility. Well played, good looking male Hillary.

It’s disheartening to know that some percentage of the audience will buy this crap and even applaud these guys. Maybe they did nothing wrong. They certainly did nothing right. The bar for heroes is super low in a world where everybody thinks your farts smell amazing. 

_{Photo credit: Getty Images/GMA}