Clooney Keeps His Digital Distance From Obama

Tue., Aug. 12, 2008 5:03 PM PDT by Natalie Finn

Paul Fenton / Zuma Press, Jun Sato/WireImage.com

As far as George Clooney is concerned, he and Scarlett Johansson are in the same boat.

"I have never texted or emailed Senator Obama. And I'll offer a million dollars to anyone who could prove otherwise. In fact, I've only talked to the Senator once in the last year and a half....on the phone," the Oscar-winning actor said Tuesday in a statement released by his publicist, Stan Rosenfield.

No, that's not just a random statement. It's in response to an item published by the Los Angeles Times Friday stating that Clooney "frequently text messages the Illinois senator with whom he's been friends for many years."

"I've spent more time with Senator McCain (he did my TV show) then [sic] I have with Senator Obama," the jocular thesp continued.

"I would hope that my friend John McCain would join me in condemning this kind of politics. Although I support Senator Obama I would never be dumb enough to offer policy advice to either candidate. They seem to be doing fine without me."

Clooney didn't deny, however, that he is hosting a $1,000-per-ticket fundraiser for the presumed Democratic nominee Sept. 2 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Actually, that's a grand to get to listen to Clooney make a speech, and $10,000 to dine with him and other well-heeled guests at the estate of American attorney Charles Adams.

There's no word on whether that one phone call in the last year and a half was the same one the L.A. Times said he and Barack Obama supposedly had a couple of weeks ago to seal the Geneva deal.

Without officially stumping that much for Obama, Clooney has become inextricably linked to the senator's campaign, largely due to statements he made last year about not wanting to get too involved in case he might put off voters who don't go for the whole Hollywood thing.

But now the scorned ScarJo can feel better.

She blamed the big brouhaha over her claims of a "personal dialogue" with Obama—which he personally denied having—on sexism, telling the Associated Press last week, "I kept thinking to myself, 'God, if this was just, like, Kal Penn or George Clooney or any of the other [Obama] surrogates or supporters...there wouldn't be [any] question about it.

"Nobody would even talk about it."

Johansson needn't have worried. Everybody talks about everything.