Sean Penn in Caracas

Dear Sean

I am allowing myself to drop you a little note in reaction to your trip to Venezuela. I am writing to you because I like you very much as an actor and I even shared some of the political causes you espouse, such as your anti Iraq stand from the start. There are two acting moments that I will cherish from your career. The first one is your excellent and touching movie with Susan Sarandon, "Dead Man Walking", one of the very few movies I got the sound track from (I do not like sound tracks in general and I really, really need to like a given movie to get the CD, not that it has much to do with your acting there anyway).

I even had some notice of your sympathy for Hugo Chavez. I did not hold you a grudge for that, after all many US left wing Liberals did commit this slight sin not knowing better. After all you are a rough man and a rough military that claims to work for the people is someone you can relate with. I get it. But from there to go and visit him? To allow yourself to be guided to the Potemkine villages that belong to the well organized tour for foreign celebrities en mal of revolutionary romanticism? I would have thought more of you. Did you not observe in your Chavez meeting that the red is the de rigueur uniform in Venezuelan offices? Did that not bother you a little bit? Did you even notice how Chavez occupies alone his space, half the table?

And digging a little bit more, did you have the curiosity to try to escape your escorts and visit some areas that the revolution has not touched yet? Did you see the homeless people on the highway to Caracas, such as the pictures of them are shown in my blog? Where you even curious to meet people disagreeing with Chavez or did you assume that they were all pro Bush and dismissed them outright? I do sincerely hope that the only reason you came to Venezuela is to con Chavez for a few millions for a movie just as Danny Glover did. At least I could find some way to forgive you: but for a movie, that I can also get.

But I am afraid that you are letting your anti Bush posture cloud your mind. And thus you remind me of my second favorite role part from you, a guest appearance in what is currently my favorite sitcom: Two and a Half Men. There you played a caricature version of yourself, as an aging star in between joints and booze, fuzzy mind. We could see quite well the biceps and tattoo that you showed Chavez today, by the way. Rough guy, aren't you? And you were equally disheveled as in that sitcom. Thus I am left to think that perhaps you actually simply played yourself in that episode, the aging star in quest of a cause, any crusade to give meaning to your life. Maybe you were not any more an actor in that show, you were just yourself. I think I will get the Dead Man Walking DVD now, I prefer to keep you in my memory that way, when you were still meaningful.

Best luck in getting your bucks for your movie, I am sure it will be a forgettable experience once it hits the screens. See, in case you were not told, everything that Chavez touches turns into shit, a reverse Midas touch. And with art and culture it is particularly pathetic.


-The end-