Classical Values :: Sean Penn spreads contagion?

June 12, 2005

Sean Penn spreads contagion?

Speaking of those who like to blame America, I see that Sean Penn is in Iran.

Is Penn there to help spread democracy?

According to an email from Iranian activist author Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, one of the sponsors of his trip is an outspokenly pro-Castro activist named Medea Benjamin:

Once again, the Cultural Imperialists from ANSWER Coalition/Global exchange are the ones who seem to have arranged the trip for Sean Penn to Iran. When I called their NY headquarters, back in 2003, their people told me, without hesitation that my father deserves to be in prison in Iran because he's mouthed off at the duely elected government of Mullahs!!! These are the same people whose number one supporters are none other than Ramsey Clark and George Soros and other manipulators of this ilk. I called the people at the S.F. Chronicle and they told me that they had discussed the idea with Penn but that in fact they were entirely unaware that Penn had actually traveled to Iran because as far as they knew, Penn was still waiting for a visa!

Also the founder of these organizations Medea Benjamin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea_Benjamin - this is a very unbiased link) who in her own brand of "activism" in the U.S. feels she can and should involved herself in the process of countries to which she is not a native. Now if this isn't inappropriate and racist, I surely don't know what is.

NOW, I urge you to tell EVERYONE you know to write these two people who are behind organizing Mr. Penn's trip to Iran and let them know that their actions are unwelcome and that we do not require their forms of intrusion into our process...PLEASE, be civil and gentle. We do not want to stoop to any levels of inappropriateness with these people who are WAITING for a wild reaction from us.

I don't know what kind of wild reaction they're awaiting, but I don't trust Sean Penn or Medea Benjamin. Whether that's a wild reaction I don't know.

Reactions by some of the anti-mullahcracy activists seem far from wild. Iranian blogger Afshin Molavi is almost happy that Sean Penn is in Iran:

I‘m glad Sean Penn is in Iran. I hope he reports things as he sees them, in all their multi-colored and even multi-hued complexity, rather than taking shots at Bush by defending the Islamic Republic of Iran. His presence ensures that many more Americans will learn about Iran. That‘s a good thing. He has a heavy responsibility on his shoulders. Indeed, simply reporting truthfully on Iran as it is today, with a young, largely pro-American, post-Islamist population, hungry for democratic change, is actually a better tool against neoconservative visions of war than manning the barricades with some of the unsavory figures of the IRI.

I know far too many Iranian leftists who have gone neo-con as a result of their feeling of abandonment by the American and European left. I wish they had not gone that route. I‘m not in the business of divining personal motivations, but I‘m guessing that many of the neoconservatives who shed crocodile tears for Iran don‘t really care too much about the future well-being of the Iranian people.

Sean Penn has an extraordinary opportunity here: to simply tell it as he sees it. That would be enough. But, then again, maybe I shouldn‘t be glad Sean Penn is in Iran. The last time he visited a Middle East country in an act of solidarity was in 2003. That country? Iraq. Shortly after he left, the bombing began.

If Sean Penn's trip is an act of solidarity with the Iranian mullahs, I suppose it could backfire with the Iranians in the same way that showing Russian citizens films of American anti-war demonstrations backfired in the 1960s:

If we're consistent in our defense of freedom, people will notice, and even our enemies will play into our hands. This happened in Iraq, where the hostile satellite networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya never missed a chance to show an anti-American protest. But what their audiences in Iran and the Arab world saw was something more -- not just anti-American protest, but anti-American protest that was allowed by the Americans. (The boomerang effect was something like what happened to the Soviet Union when it broadcast reports of Americans protesting the Vietnam War, only to have Soviet audiences notice that the Americans were not only free to protest, but also had new shoes!) Freedom is contagious, if we let it be, and open media are the most potent vector by which it spreads. That should drive our strategy, and our tactics, most of the time.

People in Iran aren't as dumb as those who would lead them might believe.

I don't think they're as dumb as Sean Penn, either.

UPDATE: While this story is lacking in the detail I might have liked to see, it appears that Sean Penn's video camera was seized by Iranian authorities:

NEW YORK Iran was rocked by bombings on Sunday, killing at least nine and wounding more than 30, as dozens of journalists from around the world gathered in advance of the presidential election this Friday. One of those journalists, actor Sean Penn--covering the events for the San Francisco Chronicle--was involved in a separate incident, and had his video camera confiscated for a time.

Several hundred women at a sit-in outside the entrance to Tehran University demanded rights revoked after the 1979 Islamic revolution. As chants and taunts arose, police and plainclothesmen surrounded the demonstrators, pushing away those trying to join the group. Officials also cut off cell phone service in the area, and challenged reporters nearby.

In the process, they briefly seized the video camera of Penn, 44, acccording to The Washington Post. He had arrived in Iran as a reporter for his friend Phil Bronstein, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.

If actors can be bloggers, I see no reason why they can't be journalists.

But can journalists and bloggers be actors?

posted by Eric on 06.12.05 at 11:31 AM

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Comments

ANSWER, Ramsey Clark, etc. -- despicable totalitarian traitors.

I gather that this Sean Penn is one of these Communist actors we hear so much about these days ever since the Communists succeeded in abolishing the HUAC. I don't bother keeping track of the comings and goings and doings and sayings of actors (except President Reagan), much less Communist actors. As far as I'm concerned, he can stay in Iran, except that the Iranians obviously don't want him.

A far, far more important Communist, or proto-Communist, was Auguste Comte. I'm glad that the editors of Human Events had the wisdom to list his The Course of Positive Philosophy in their list of poisonous books. Well before Marx, he propounded the basic premises of Communism, atheism and collectivism. He argued for a "religion of humanity", humanity as a mass, the worship of the collective to take the place of God and of the individual man or woman. He coined the term "altruism" in opposition to egoism (individualism). He articulated a philosophy called "positivism", in which "science" would replace philosophy (even atheistic philosophy!), theology, and mythology. He founded the false "science" of "sociology".

In short, he was one of the Akhenatons of our time. I oppose him and all of his deadly legacy.

Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · June 12, 2005 01:30 PM

...Okay!

Anyhow, moving on from the above: Sean Penn is a biased guy, but I get the vibe that what he writes from Iran will probably be pretty sympathetic to the reformers. He doesn't tend to associate himself with right-wing religious extremists of *any* faith.

Joe · June 12, 2005 05:07 PM

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of Failure · June 25, 2005 08:08 PM