OK, perhaps hypocrisy at some level is part of our common human character.
None of us are exempt from it. It is a mistake we all make & in part might be due to our inability to see objects from other perspectives at the same time. Often we all miss the nuances & inter-connections that constantly conflict with our perceptions of reality.
As such, it is probably wise to go forward, collectively, with a sense of our own smallness & to attempt to exercise humility.
That said, I think Sean Penn's actions in the last year have been particularly outrageous.
Perhaps they were unpardonable.
Last November, Penn wrote an editorial in the Nation about his trip to Venezuela to meet with Hugo Chavez & his trip to Cuba to meet with Raul Castro. You can read that glowing summary here
While I agree with Penn that we need to normalize our relationship with Cuba & we should have done so at the time of the fall of the Soviet Union, his writing is obtuse & flowery that I can't help but feel annoyed, for example, writing of Chavez:
"By now, October 2008, I [Sean Penn] 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."
Note, to Penn's credit, the article contains a single paragraph that addresses the fact that Cuba represses political dissent more than any other American country. This paragraph comes at the end after line after line of hollow praise of the greatness of both Chavez & Castro.
So Sean Penn, how dare you?
I'm wondering how he is getting away with this. At the the Academy Awards he condemned the proposition 8 as an offense against humanity. He took an award for his role as Harvey Milk. Milk of course battled the John Birch Society to move forward with civil liberties for gays.
But I'm wondering how Penn can write so adoringly of Raul & Fidel Castro while ignoring how Cubans would have treated the people who live on San Francisco's Castro, had they been in Cuba?
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Cuba has imprisoned people for being gay. Cuban police have terrorized people for being gay, labeling them "maricones" and agents of imperialism. Fidel openly opposed them & illegalized homosexuality.
Proposition 8 certainly denied Californian gays the ability to marry. But even that, doesn't compare to the violence, imprisonment, & indignity suffered by those in Cuba.
Violence, imprisonment, & indignity which they suffered even as Penn sat with Castro in his hacienda.
For which, they & all political dissidents suffer even at this moment.
For this reason, I don't think Penn has the moral authority to talk down to anyone. He really ought to apologize: To the gay community, to the family of Harvey Milk, & even to the supporters of Proposition 8, whom he demonized.
& the academy should apologize too. They booed Michael Moore for his critique of an unjust war, yet they applauded Sean Penn while looking past a serious human rights issue? Unbelievable.
Justice, truth, & equality are all wholes, when in parts, they cease to exist.
