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Clooney takes on London mayor over Marbles

The row over the return of the Parthenon Marbles that has pitted Hollywood star George Clooney, of known activist fame with British authorities and media is escalating, albeit on a tangent.

Taking the public row a bit further, the mayor of London, the ever colorful Boris Johnson (pictured, on the right) likened the Hollywood star to, perhaps, the evilest man in history, saying that Hitler also wanted to take the Marbles to Athens after he would loot them from the British Museum. “This Clooney is advocating nothing less than the Hitlerian agenda for London's cultural treasures," said the Lord Mayor.

Clooney, picked up the gauntlet, and not to mince words he chalked Mr Johnson's remarks “to a little too much hyperbole washed down with a few whiskeys.”

This time Mr Clooney's retort was more tightly woven with facts from international law and argument, likening the break up of the Parthenon Marbles to a supposed break-up of Michelangelo’s David: “It would be as if the statue of David's head were sold to England. His arm to the Vatican. And his torso to the Met.”

Mr Johnson has predictably chosen his side in this controversy that is pitting the British Museum and its supporters against the rest of the rational world. However, it's one thing to voice support for a cash cow, as the Marbles have become for London and the British Museum, and another to hurl abuse on an issue on which one knows very little about.