“ One of his chief recruits was George Clooney, whom Bono invited to accompany him to the G-8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland; when the activists seeking more aid to Africa wanted to put pressure on the heads of state gathered there, Clooney was wheeled out to do the morning shows. He was assigned to buttonhole Paul Wolfowitz, then the head of the World Bank, to pressure the White House to increase financing for the bank’s public-education programs in the third world. Clooney balked only at buttering up Laura Bush. I attended the meeting and heard him tell Jamie Drummond, the executive director of DATA: “I just don’t feel it’s right for me to meet the first lady. I’ve been very critical of her husband in public; I think there’s something unmanly about meeting with his wife first.”
March 11, 2008