George Clooney Tries to Save the World
George Clooney's latest cause? Taking on the gossip site Gawker.com for its new use of Google maps to post celebrity sightings. George thinks this is a dangerous business, and he's urging celebs and their flaks to flood the site with fake sightings – not a boycott, mind you. Think Gawker will mind? Traffic is traffic.
Meanwhile, Clooney's other contribution to world stability – the auction of his Oscar gift bag for charity – finished up. The winner, an unnamed family from Birmingham, paid $45,100 for the swag, which included coffee, a year of Vonage phone service, Tahitian pearls and lots of other goodies. The total gift bag worth was well over $100,000, so why the low bids? There's a little clause that goes with most of the big-ticket items in these gift bags that the celebs have to use them in person, but this one had an exception. You'd think somebody would have put up more cash
The big question is whether or not Clooney, in all his charitable fervor, will claim this as a tax write-off. The government is thinking of cracking down on celebrity swag by making the stars claim it as income. Would these guys show up so readily as presenters at award shows if they had to cough up cash for those free phones and designer jeans? Would we miss them?
