Bono is making poverty history. Iraq is being liberated. Someone is saving the whales. China is a human rights violator. Oprah is saving an entire continent. Hugo Chavez is a terrorist. All the people on Entertainment Tonight are giving back...
...except for Sean Penn. Writing about his recent trip to Cuba and Venezuela, Penn lists among his motivations: "to deepen my understanding of Chávez and
Venezuela and excite my writing hand."
Huh?
In his recent article for The Nation, Penn opens by saying:
Soon to be Vice President-elect Joe Biden was rallying the troops: "We
can no longer be energy dependent on Saudi Arabia or a Venezuelan
dictator." Well, I know what Saudi Arabia is. But having been to
Venezuela in 2006, touring slums, mixing with the wealthy opposition and
spending days and hours at its president's side, I wondered, without
wondering, to whom Senator Biden was referring. Hugo Chávez
Frías is the democratically elected president of Venezuela (and
by democratically elected I mean that he has repeatedly stood before the
voters in internationally sanctioned elections and won large majorities,
in a system that, despite flaws and irregularities, has allowed his
opponents to defeat him and win office, both in a countrywide referendum
last year and in regional elections in November). And Biden's words were
the kind of rhetoric that had recently led us into a life-losing and
monetarily costly war, which, while toppling a shmuck in Iraq, had also
toppled the most dynamic principles upon which the United States was
founded, enhanced recruitment for Al Qaeda and deconstructed the US
military.
By now, October 2008, I had digested my earlier visits to Venezuela and
Cuba and time spent with Chávez and Fidel Castro. I had grown
increasingly intolerant of the propaganda. Though Chávez himself
has a penchant for rhetoric, never has it been a cause for war. In hopes
of demythologizing this "dictator," I decided to pay him another visit.
By this time I had come to say to friends in private, "It's true,
Chávez may not be a good man. But he may well be a great one."
Read the rest of the article and/or listen to Penn share his views.
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