According to Douglas MacKinnon, writing in today’s Wall Street Journal:
…Mr. Obama sat down with Steven Spielberg for over three hours at DreamWorks Studios to hear the famous director’s various campaign strategies to defeat Mitt Romney in the fall…
Now, everybody knows why Obama would spend three hours listening to Spielberg: He does it in return for the big checks the mogul writes to Obama’s campaign and the influence he has on other big Hollywood check writers. But why would a putatively smart guy like Spielberg think that Obama really wants to hear what he thinks? Can he be that deluded?
Actually, he and other show business big shots who get publicly involved with politicians are that deluded. It just isn’t enough for a guy like Spielberg or George Clooney that they are good looking (well Clooney is), somewhat talented (Spielberg may be skillful with a camera, but he’s bereft of any ideas that are not liberal pieties), and of course, impossibly rich. Yet, all that isn’t enough; they need to taken with great seriosity (a term coined by Woody Allen).
So the president pleasures the mogul and then receives a fat fee for his services. There’s a word for that. But it’s all perfectly legal.
