Mountain of Snakes
December 1st, 2008 by Nick SaintSean Penn went to Cuba, then attempted to write about the experience. The results are pretty spectacular. He first gets into serious trouble in his first sentence:
The disadvantages of being a writer, who is often written about, are numerous.
Inauspicious beginnings. I confess I only skimmed a few paragraphs, and I challenge anyone to do a more thorough job. You can only plow through so much of this sort of thing before you surrender:
I can speak in firsthand, to bearing witness to an often untruthful, reckless and demonizing media. Yes, in many cases, the smoke would prove an accurate expectation of fire. But, the fact is, that our most respected, call that mainstream media, in print and on television are, in part, conscious manufacturers of deception.
Not only can he speak in firsthand, he can write in tongues! Unfortunately, before I could learn what Penn was actually up to in Cuba, my ability to read further was sapped by this extended metaphor:
Free market capitalism and greed in the hands of humans are, in fact, a marriage that never rids itself of the demon. They are of one body. It can be said that Ronald Reagan marked the end of the Roosevelt era, and perhaps, that Barack Obama may mark the end of Reagan’s. But historically, our system is a swing, we raise high to the breeze at our back, swing low, nearly taking off our feet, then sway high again to the wind in our face. But that low swing, never low enough to pick up the men and women on the ground. It is a human cycle subject to a monetary one. But with population exploding globally, we seem to tighten up the links and raise the seat higher with every cycle. More and more are left off the swing below. In the last days of this year’s presidential campaign, the outcry from the right, and the cry out from the left, has rejuvenated the fears, the possibilities, the values, and the necessity to consider aspects of socialism.
Say what you will about the Huffington Post, there is certainly no elitist screening process over there.
(h/t Mark Hemingway)
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:13 pm
[...] all that economic doomsday nastiness, it’s time for something a little lighter. When I wrote this, I had no idea that Sean Penn had been up to this stuff for years. The piece I quoted is not an [...]