The Enlightened Despot

After 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 aberration. He is a very crazy man, and a profoundly awful writer. From a full page ad he took out in the Times:

“It’s a sunny afternoon in Northern California,” the weatherman interrupted, “puffy white clouds resting upon a beautiful blue sky.” We sat in the car eating french fries in the parking lot of our local burger joint. President George W. Bush had just rebuffed the United Nations’ push to re-introduce weapons inspection teams into an Iraq where even a deservedly humiliated Saddam Hussein had expressed willingness to accept them. Tightening in my gut, on this otherwise fab day, were troubling questions about our nation’s understanding of this pending conflict. Its most accessible information sources were the corporately sponsored and largely conservative media outlets. Indeed, in my gut, were my own troubling questions, not only about our Administration’s unilateral military posturing, but also, what effect U.S. decisions today might have on my children’s tomorrow.

As soon as I read this, I hurried to his Wikipedia page to see if there were any instances of brain trauma that could explain all this. I didn’t find anything, but I did notice something very odd about it: it reads as if it is largely written by Sean Penn. I say that based both on the prose style and the content. Wikipedia articles, as a rule, do not look like this:

In 1986 he starred in the drama At Close Range, opposite Christopher Walken. The film was based on a true story and gained positive reviews from critics. Fans and critics noticed the change in Penn’s body build. Penn appeared very muscular and in shape. It’s considered to be the first film to cash in on Penn’s status as a sex symbol.

If he is working on his own article, he has been kind enough to leave this gem intact:

Directors Trey Parker and Matt Stone claim to have received a letter from Penn prior to the release of thier film Team America: World Police in 2004. The letter allegedly argued that they shouldn’t put the movie out for fear of George Bush being re-elected. Both Stone and Parker in an interview with CBS quoted the following: “What if we want George Bush to be re-elected? And who cares, you’re Sean Penn”.

(h/t CWB)

Sean 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)