Covering The Coverage Of The Coverage: Sean Penn Writes On Hugo Chavez And Fidel Castro
4 December 2008, 2:30 PM. By Alex Alvarez
Sean Penn is arguably as famous for media speculation into his politics as he is for his movie roles (Harvey Milk, Matthew Poncelet in Dead Man Walking, Jeff Spicoli), so it’s not terribly surprising that he would feel the need to pen (Oh!) an essay on media, politics and, above all, his relationship to these. He covers, of course, his meetings with controversial leaders Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.
Concerning Castro, Penn reminisces mostly about his then 14-year-old daughter’s refusal to meet Cuba’s dictator:
On a 2005 family Christmas trip to Cuba, traveling under the auspices of religious tourism, my wife, our children and I were received in a private midnight meeting with then-President Fidel Castro and the great Colombian novelist and nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Prior to our departure from the United States, I had sat my children down with documentaries of the Cuban revolution. In particular, my daughter had been offended by the history of oppression toward homosexuals in Cuba, and had made it clear to her father, that if offered the opportunity to meet directly with Castro, she would refuse it.
That’s a cute family anecdote. But, in an essay that is ostensibly geared towards salvaging Sean Penn’s public image while simultaneously vilifying the media (Wait. So The Huffington Post doesn’t count, right? RIGHT.) that keeps him famous and fed, it’s interesting how Penn delves into the details of his trip to Cuba that are of personal interest without offering any explanation as to why it is, exactly, that a high-profile American is taking a trip to a communist nation under embargo in the first place. Religious tourism? Apt phrasing. Next time our grandmother expresses an interest in being buried in what was formerly her family’s mausoleum in Havana — a city in a country she’s been barred from returning to for the past 40+ years — we’ll take it up with Sean Penn. He’ll help a sister out, right? Death is a form religious tourism, to some.
On the topic of Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan President as well as that nation’s Fifth Sexiest Man, Penn attempts to clear up some of the American media and public’s patently false perceptions of this great and kinda-sexy leader:
The aides dropped me at the Caracas Palace Hotel facing Plaza Alta Mira. In the plaza, there were protesters, about 200 strong, screaming obscenities and anti-Chavez slogans before the cameras of the media across the street from the hotel. It had been wildly reported that President Chavez had “shut down” RCTV, which had become the primary opposition news station in Caracas. This action was touted as evidence of a totalitarian government’s policy of censorship on free speech and free press, drawing the ire of domestic and international free press advocates, including Reporters Without Borders. In fact, RCTV, like all stations, had a finite lease period. As a station that on a nearly daily basis encouraged a coup and even assassination of President Chavez since his 1998 election, the government had simply decided not to re-up that particular lease.
Did he clear that up for you? In case you are still under the common, ignorant American impression that free speech does not exist in a country where the government can “simply decide” not to renew a station’s lease after espousing oppositional beliefs, allow Penn to set you straight:
I went to my hotel room and turned on the TV. Coincidentally, there was Bill O’Reilly broadcasting from Fox Television from the United States, decrying the Venezuelan “dictator.” As was my habit, I switched channels, but not before thinking, “Hmmm…I thought Chavez censored this kind of thing.” Two channels over, there was the Venezuelan news station broadcasting live from the protest in front of my hotel. Unmasked demonstrators screaming, “Chavez is a pig!” into the camera. Apparently this kind of speech was allowed without fearing arrest. I turned off the television and let the free speech of the square drift through my window and lull me to sleep.
What gets us the most about Penn’s essay is not the fact that it’s an actor flexing his hubris in an attempt to play journalist or author, or that real opportunities to create a discussion are thrown out at the expense of creating a slightly patronizing personal essay. No, what gets us is that this essay exists in the first place. Surely Sean Penn has spent enough time in the media spotlight to understand that, for better or for worse, this is how his world is constructed and that, if he has a problem with this, he has the option of choosing to be an “actor” rather than a “celebrity” and remaining out of the media glare, participating in cultural and charitable acts quietly and anonymously while honing his craft as an actor at the same time.
The fact that this essay exists also furthers our impression that Sean Penn acknowledges the fact that he has done something in need of defense. If your actions find you sitting at a laptop and parceling out blame to every institution (The media! The government! The public!) other than yourself, perhaps you need to rethink those actions and eventually choose between two phrases:
“Y’all can suck it.”
Or
“I’m sorry.”
Mountain of Snakes [HuffPo]
(14) 
Post Your Comment
Did you know you can now share a link, image or video?
Click to submit your own notas.
I think you Guanababes should start putting your intials with your posts, so we know which is writing what…as the population of Guanacentral grows, there seems to be a variance in tone. Whether that was your intention or not.
Besos,
Alex
Sean Penn’s daughter is proof that American schools are brain washing thier children with left wing homosexual agenda.
“my daughter had been offended by the history of oppression toward homosexuals in Cuba”
@yo: yeah, not that 14 yr old arent into civil rights or social issues, but i got the impression that maybe that was more of sean penn’s opinion projected onto his daughter than anything. what 14 yr old do you know that’s going to argue with a country’s president at a meeting?
@LaLa. nice try spin doctor.
@ means im discussing something with you and giving my take, not spinning what you said, yo-yo.
@lala: my nephews and children that were raised to be conscious of oppression and systems of oppression. it happens.
@yo: and what’s wrong w/ that?
ok. My point was that the American education system is a system of oppression. It oppresses by suppressing free thought and encouraging political correctedness. Political correctedness IS oppression. I will choose what I want to think about homosexuals or any other form of life. I will not put up with mind control from the thought police.
“I will choose what I want to think about homosexuals or any other form of life. I will not put up with mind control from the thought police”
You can believe anything you want, just don’t interfere with a person’s right to exist,to earn a living, to live where they want to live, to exercise their rights as American citizens !
he should have expanded on that religious permit people get to go to cuba, it’s the only way to go around the 3 year period the american government makes you wait before you can visit your family and cuba and costs about 2x as much as going regular for a “religious” reason that isn’t anything more than a piece of paper
f u bush! and all those 1st generation cuban exile grandmothers that supported him!
@ Will.
I would exile you from America. Go live in Europe where they have no morals.
thank you cecilia :)
Sean Penn is not Hunter S. Thompson, and the fluff piece he wrote is nowhere near as interesting or effusive as anything that Gonzo journalism, or Tom Wolfe, or Pete Dexter, or Ruben Martinez has produced by their efforts (anybody ever read CROSSING OVER?–it’s an essential book, if you are a Latino, or care about Latino politics, or hell, if you’re just human, because it touches upon immigration in a way that none of the yo-yos and fucktards on all the cable channels and all the newspapers can’t, that is, with emotional connectivity and truth). No one reads enough, and no one has history at their fingertips, which is why Sean Penn can elide the suffering of real people who have had to live under dictatorships with a clacking of his keypad; he can gloss over the history of Latin America’s long struggle against usurpation with a grin-and-bear it attitude because he knows that he is primarily speaking to white people (who are the main readers), and these people will just take what he says at face value. What, exactly, are Mr. Penn’s credentials? Has he read the Communist Manifesto? Simon Bolivar? Jose Marti? Did he study Latin American history? How dare this wealthy, bourgeois, American opportunist make light of human indignation! He is the ultimate bad-ass come to tell it like it is, and I could detect the conscious irony in his tone which absolutely reeks because it belies a studied falseness. Still, Sean Penn can get away with it, because no one will protest, Latinos or otherwise, except for the writers on this blog (who, frankly, need to work on their composition). It just goes to show you how complacent Latinos can be.
That motherfucker should really stick to acting. It’s assholes like him that do more damage than they realize. Just look up Hemingway during the Spanish civil war. Or the scores of American intellectuals during the Communist uprisings in the late twentieth century. Talented actor: yes. Qualified journalist: fuck no.
Hey Latinos! I’m fucking insulted, and you should be, too!
I couldn’t put it in better words myself urban latino! Penn should stick to acting - I used to love him, but now he is just an embarrassment to the human race, his writings make me puke! He should really stop the writing crap and quietly return to his acting.