Chavez the Celebrity Magnet

A few years ago, Hugo Chavez started to receive visits from a small group of celebrities. I don’t remember the exact order in which they all visited, but off the top of my head I believe the group included Danny Glover, Kevin Spacey, Harry Belafonte, and Naomi Campbell. All three of the actors on the list are known for their ultra-liberal political stances, not to mention keen detest for the Bush administration. In a 2006 visit to Venezuela, Belafonte labeled Bush as “the greatest terrorist in the world.” These words garnered him plenty of criticism, and even had the fairly liberal John Edwards declining Belafonte’s political endorsement for President.

As for Campbell, I’m not sure what her political leanings are, or even if she has any at all. In her case, rumors swirled that she was actually dating Chavez, maybe seeing herself as a proletariat Carla Bruni or something like that. For Glover, it turns out his “friendship” with Chavez would be lucrative; he received around $20 million from the deep-pocketed one to fund a biopic movie about Haitian revolutionary Touissant Loverture. None of these celebrity jaunts with Hugo particularly bothered me at the time. Sure, I liked the Lethal Weapon movies and who doesn’t love “The Banana Boat” song?

Wacky, lefty politics from people too rich to care about what anyone thinks... But, this whole deal with Chavez and Sean Penn is more bothersome to me. First of all, I like Penn as an actor quite a bit. Not to conflate one’s onscreen achievements or personality with real-life actions, but he has a certain presence, a certain legitimacy that makes him stand out as an actor. Secondly, I thought what he did during Katrina was ballsy as hell. He caught a lot of flak for renting a boat and trying to pull people out of flooded areas, but at the time it was a hell of a lot more than what FEMA was doing.

So, the fact that he has allowed Chavez to parade him around the country not once but twice is troubling to me. Last year on Letterman, Penn seemed to be drinking the Kool-Aid quite heavily. What he says about Chavez’s efforts in Venezuela is nothing less than an old MVR press release. The most egregious, erroneous tidbit he offers up is that RCTV, the TV station shut down by Chavez due to its political leanings, had been “encouraging assassination every day since 1998.” Incredibly, stupidly wrong on all accounts.

Penn was back in Venezuela this weekend, allowing himself to be driven around, out on display for all to see. Chavez's pet, prize, Oscar-winning gringo actor, together to celebrate the glory of the revolution and thumb their noses back north at the horrible empire. I haven't heard if Penn is backing Obama for President, but if he is, I wonder what his justification for visiting Chavez will be once Obama takes office? There will be no more Bush to use as an excuse, as if having a crappy president were really an excuse to visit with quasi-dictators who have eschewed all democratic ideals, destroyed political institutions and squandered oil revenues... (uh oh, this is starting to sound like a rant).

So, it saddens me to see actors who I had genuine respect for behave so irresponsibly. I suppose Jane Fonda was criticized for similar antics during Vietnam, but she was actually protesting a war. What is Penn trying to prove? Does he really believe that Chavez has helped the poor in Venezuela? Has he done the research, looked at the numbers to see that on aggregate, the poor are exponentially worse off than they were 10 years ago? If you happen to run into him, please ask him for me...

Photo: Cooperativa.cl