George Clooney is the cover boy for this week’s Newsweek. It’s all about Clooney and his work in Sudan, where he’s been spending a lot of time over the past six months. Once again, since this is a celebrity site, I’m not going to get into the history of Sudan, or get into details about the genocide or the history of oppression and violent, bloody rule, or how more people should be paying attention. If you’d like to know more, here is Wikipedia’s overview. The full Clooney-Newsweek piece is here, and here are some of the highlights:

Clooney on using his celebrity: “It’s harder for authoritarian regimes to survive, because we can circumvent old structures with cell phones and the Internet,” says Clooney. “Celebrity can help focus news media where they have abdicated their responsibility. We can’t make policy, but we can ‘encourage’ politicians more than ever before.” Which was why, a few weeks ago, Clooney was being driven in a white pickup down a red dirt road under the watchful eyes of teenage soldiers armed with AK-47s. L.A. was half a world away, but the paparazzi were not far from his mind. “If they’re going to follow me anyway,” he was saying, “I want them to follow me here.”

Clooney invested in his own Sudan satellite: Celebrity statesmen function like freelance diplomats, adopting issue experts and studying policy. More pragmatic than stars turned social activists in the past, they use the levers of power to solve problems. Clooney has Sudanese rebel leaders on speed dial. He’s had AK-47s shoved in his chest. And when he’s on movie sets, he gets daily Sudan briefings via email. Now he’s gone one step further—George Clooney has a satellite. Privately funded and publicly accessible (SatSentinel.org), this eye in the sky monitors military movements on the north-south border—the powder keg in a region the U.S. director of national intelligence described a year ago as the place on earth where “a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur.” “I’m not tied to the U.N. or the U.S. government, and so I don’t have the same constraints. I’m a guy with a camera from 480 miles up,” Clooney says. “I’m the anti-genocide paparazzi.”

Clooney on celebrity-activists: “Bono’s model really worked,” Clooney says. “There is more attention on celebrity than ever before—and there is a use for that besides selling products.” Stars like Brad Pitt (Katrina), Ben Affleck (Congo), and Sean Penn (Haiti) followed suit. “A lot of the young actors I see coming up in the industry are not just involved, but knowledgeable on a subject and then sharing that with fans,” says Clooney. No one’s just a “peace activist” anymore—they have a specialty.

Clooney doesn‘t want to run for anything: “I didn’t live my life in the right way for politics, you know,” he said, sitting outside the Central Pub in Juba, scarfing down pizza. “I f–ked too many chicks and did too many drugs, and that’s the truth.” A smart campaigner, he believes, “would start from the beginning by saying, ‘I did it all. I drank the bong water. Now let’s talk about issues.’ That’s gonna be my campaign slogan: ‘I drank the bong water.’?”

Clooney’s strategy for public diplomacy is informed by film. “You have to get people in the theater first,” he reflects. “The trick is to be really concise—it’s a one-liner on a poster, right? You have to make it clear. ‘You can stop a war before it starts’ [or] ‘If you had a chance to prevent the next Darfur, what would you do?’? You cannot sustain people’s attention seven days a week, for a long period of time. Actors have an advantage, because you do a movie and then you disappear for a while,” he says. “That’s what John and I try to do—come back every three or four months with something new to reignite interest.” Then he jokes it might take The Real Housewives of Sudan to keep Americans’ attention.

Clooney on his job as a celebrity activist: “My job is to amplify the voice of the guy who lives here and is worried about his wife and children being slaughtered,” says Clooney, summing up the opportunity and obligation of the celebrity statesman. “He wants to shout it from the mountaintops, but he doesn’t have a very big megaphone or a very big mountain. So he’s asking anyone who has a mountain and megaphone to protect his family, his village. And if he finds me and asks, ‘You got a big megaphone?’ and I say, ‘Yes.’ ‘You got a decent-size mountain to yell it from?’ ‘Yeah, I got a pretty good-sized mountain.’ ‘Will you do me a favor and yell it?’ And I go, ‘Absolutely.’?”

[From Newsweek]

The Newsweek article is full of quotes from people who give George a lot of credit for positively affecting the situation in Southern Sudan – and I think it’s well-deserved. Clooney has put his time, his money and his credibility where his mouth is, and he did positively affect the situation. Although, and this is just nit-picking: I wish Clooney would stop referencing his 2005-06 Oscar campaign as the catalyst for him getting more involved in international humanitarian tragedies. It makes him seem… blasé. That’s my only complaint though, so he’s doing something right.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Newsweek cover courtesy of CoverAwards.