Government

Amal Clooney Over Here Reminding People That America Is Enabling Atrocities

When you call reporters the "enemy of the people" there are repercussions.

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Amal Clooney (Photo by Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty)

The world’s most popular attorney — who is married to some actor — was just awarded 2018’s Global Citizen of the Year by the United Nations Correspondents Association. The famed human rights attorney took advantage of the occasion to speak in defense of journalists and remind everyone that the United States is turning its shining city on a hill into a garish casino boardwalk catering to petty thugs.

Clooney, whose mother was a journalist, called out Donald Trump’s repeated attacks upon the media as giving the “the green light” to repressive regimes seeking to torture and kill reporters.

On the heels of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, Clooney’s remarks highlight the danger of a global hegemon signaling to tinpot dictators that it intends to look the other way when journalists are tortured to preserve the White House’s own “brand.” It would be gauche to raise a stink over the brutal murder of someone who worked for the “failing Washington Post” after all. When America is unwilling to leverage its standing for the sake of human rights, there’s no one out there who can. Who are they going to listen to? Canada? I love our flappy headed neighbors to the North, but they’re not capable of bending the world to their will.

Clooney represents jailed journalists around the world. That she senses a palpable shift in the way regimes treat journalists based on America’s abdication of its own mythos, should send chills down everyone’s spine.

But, instead, this will be a mere blip in whatever fresh hell comes down over the weekend. So much winning.

Amal Clooney says Trump’s campaign against the media ‘gave the green light’ for Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal murder [Business Insider]

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