Sean Penn in Iran

Back before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there were a group of high-profile American movie stars and media-hounds who announced that they were going to Iraq because as Don Wade, a talk show host on WLS, a conservative radio station in Chicago, said these people believed that the U.S. military would never forge a strike on a country being visited by so many important Americans. The were called traitors.

Now, I can't remember if they actually went... Maybe they overslept and missed their plane, or the lack of Starbucks at the Baghdad airport overshadowed their political cause. By any means, the actual war started, and we had Dixie Chicks to burn at the stake.

I was still doing my weekly local radio show then and me, being the liberal one (I guess; if we are talking in absolutes), defended the actors and others explaining that they were doing something, however convoluted and narcissistic, to affect the start of this war. Sure, they were probably prolonging the inevitable, but they were doing more than just debating the issues in some po-dunk radio station in the middle of an Illinois corn field.

This week, The San Francisco Chronicle is running a five-part story that Sean Penn wrote about his trip to Iran in June. I have read the first three parts, and... Well... He shouldn't quit his day job, but in his defense, I have to go back to my original argument. In this series he is doing what Crystal Blankenship discusses in her "Outrage" post: going beyond the normal American civilian call of duty to make an impact in our world, our reality. He went inside a culture that hates America and explored why they are the way they are.

It's been done throughout the war, I know, by people who are much more talented writers and filmographers, but because Sean Penn is who he is, there is a whole new section of SF Chronicle's readership who are learning something, who are becoming educated as to why some of the world feels the way it does about the U.S.

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

Day Four

Day Five

Now, what do we do not only with Sean Penn's information, but with all of the information?

Found this in my in-box this morning: from Beyond The Grave!!!

Click on the image, then click on the image again. A small, framed picture with four blue arrows pointing at it should show up in the lower right-hand corner. If you haven't lost interest by now, click on that for a larger, readable image.

Pinky & The Brain

Dr.H.S. Thompson: Transcript of a Fax from Beyond the Grave

Dear Dan...
What are you, some kind of drooling primate?! This country is in enough shit without swine like you abusing his only creative outlet to indulge his repressed suburban fantasies!

You have no business dragging Hilary Duff into your perverted world. She's a dumb kid, but you can't fault her for that. She has an inhuman amount of money and follows bad advice from people who are draining her like a freshly tapped oil field. You are just taking your place in line. Take a cold shower. Guzzle some whiskey and quaaludes. Lock yourself in the bathroom for the weekend with a tub of olive oil and this week's Kohl's ad, but for Christ's sake, stop projecting this rabid depravity!

"What ever happened to that little girl..." My ass! Your concern is transparent. You and I both know that if given half-a-chance and fifteen minutes, you'd do things to that poor idiot that would render her with a limp and a life's-worth of regression therapy bills.

You are lucky that the only people who read your blog are lifeless number peddlers and tattooed, bespectacled lunatics. If someone with any kind of pull got ahold of this, you'd find yourself licking the boot sole of some mouth-breather prison guard in Joliet, IL. The hammer of justice looms, my friend, and it's casting its shadow over your laptop.

Sincerely,

Hunter

My response:

Dr. Thompson,

Have those wonderful nights reading Italian poetry in the hot tub at Owl Farm meant nothing to you?

Despondently Yours,

Daniel

Hilary!

What's with the heroin sheik, darlin'? Where did the little girl who talked to the cartoon version of herself go?