Chavez Giddy At Penn Trip
LA GRITA, Venezuela (AP) - President Hugo Chavez reveled in his role as host to Hollywood star Sean Penn as they traveled together through the Venezuelan countryside in an open jeep, stopping to greet adoring crowds.
The Oscar-winning actor said little Friday, beyond saying he was working as a freelance journalist, following up on reporting stints in Iraq and Iran. In any case, his star power was clearly eclipsed by the populist president, who took the wheel, honking to the crowds, signing autographs and gathering letters from people asking for help.
At one point, Chavez asked Penn to speak to the crowd at an outdoor ceremony.
“I came here looking for a great country. I found a great country,” the U.S. actor said.
“I’m also here as a journalist and so I owe it to that medium to wait until I’ve digested, fact-checked and finished my journey here” before saying more, Penn said. He thanked Chavez for the visit.
Chavez lauded Penn as “a man who is critical of his government and of imperialism.”
Penn is the latest in a series of U.S. celebrities and public figures to visit with Chavez, including actor Danny Glover, singer Harry Belafonte and Cindy Sheehan, who became a peace activist after her 24- year-old soldier son Casey was killed in Iraq.
Like the others, Chavez has embraced Penn as a fellow critic of U.S. President George W. Bush.
“He’s a courageous man, he’s very quiet,” Chavez said as he introduced Penn to reporters and foreign dignitaries during the flight from Caracas to western Venezuela. “But he has a fire burning inside.”
Chavez also talked about the havoc an economic crisis in the U.S. might wreak.
“When the economic crisis in the United States breaks out, it’s going to hit the world,” Chavez said. “We’ll help them. The United States must be helped because the United States is going to implode.”
Later in the jeep, Penn stayed in the back seat, wearing sunglasses and taking in the spectacle. Screaming women tried to flag down Chavez, who stopped to kiss young children and braked for a cow that wandered across the road as he led a caravan of trucks through fields of potatoes, beets, lettuce and corn.
It was a familiar scene for Chavez, who grew up poor in a small town in rural Venezuela, and who loves to show visitors what his government is doing for everyday Venezuelans. The highlight of the trip came when Chavez and Penn donned white lab coats and toured an agricultural research laboratory.
Some Chavez opponents say Penn is being used by the president for political purposes.
Cuban-born actress Maria Conchita Alonso, who grew up in Venezuela, said Penn’s visit lends support to a “totalitarian” leader who wants increasing control of society—a charge Chavez denies. Speaking by phone from her home in Beverly Hills, California, Alonso said she respects Penn as an actor, but hopes he “comes to his senses and he realizes that he’s being used.”
Be respectful of others and their opinions. Inflammatory remarks and inane leftist drivel will be deleted. It ain’t about free speech, remember you’re in a private domain. My website, my prerogative.
If you can't handle using your real email address, don't bother posting a comment.
Being the parent of a Down Syndrome child, I refused to comment on yesterday’s previous thread about “these” two shit-heads. However, the two souls depicted in the previously posted thread could well be proven more highly intelligent beings than these two.
This dictator’s whore Penn will someday, somehow pay for his asshole, self-righteous, amature diplomacy.
Chavez will sometime (possibly soon) pay for poking at the dragon … Hopefully his people will have had well enough of him long before we do and hang him in the public square.
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:24 pmAt least Penn wasn’t sitting in a Russian made AA turret with an “Enemy” helmet on like Hanoi Jane. But, I can pretty much figure out what Penn’s “in-depth” reporting from a Presedintial convoy will say. Alonso is right. Penn should have snuck in disguised as a tourist and poked around places Alonso knows about.
Luckily, Hollowood spit out Pat Dollard aye? Which tells me there might be hope for the place.
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:29 pmI hear Penn gave an in deep ‘interview’ to chavez’s burrito later that day
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:52 pmI lived in Venezuela for over a year in Maracaibo, nice people there, truly. Once you get over the uneducated and myopic university eleites and rub elbows with regular folks they still come down to the left, but not really anything close to Chavez. My wife is from there and we have been there pre and post Chavez election and the state of Zulia where Maracaibo is has done nothing but improve. The Caracas are hasn’t. The governor of Zulia was the conservative that ran against Chavez in the last election. Not unlike what the democrat party relied on in the 60’s to gain power by using the phony war on poverty and cynically using the civil rights movement to gain power. All they did was stick poor urban blacks in the projects and made them reliant on the gov’t teat. Criminal. This populist bung hole is no different and he is using the US as a foil for blame. ‘Look, the yanqui imperialists are stopping us from progress!’ Sound familiar? It should. I’d like to know however, just what it is we are being blamed for? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:57 pmFYI, Venezuelans don’t eat burritos, instead perhaps Chavez let him have his teqeno, which is a small cheese filled soft pastry.
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:32 pmThis article makes me sick to my stomach, what a traitor!!! standing there on Venezuelan soil while Chavez says the US is going to implode and how we will need his help. The private sector alone in this country is worth way more than this Asshole has. Help us? thats hilarious! Penn should be deported and Chavez should be taken out by a sniper
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:22 pmSo, Mr. Spicoli spent his summer vacation with Senor Hitler?
August 4th, 2007 at 5:57 amBet he scored some “cash shit” too?
Two of a kind. Sean Penn is nothing more than a commie worshiper. So is Danny Glover. Hell, most of Hollywood loves these radical lefties, what can we expect?
August 4th, 2007 at 7:23 amThe look on Penn’s face. Looks like he hasn’t taken a shit for years.
August 4th, 2007 at 8:32 amTwo physically ugly men trying to be something they are not. They will never rise above their base and common selves. History will show a blip in time for Chavez and none at all for Penn. So sad that better men then they would utilize the opportunity both have to be a shining light in this dangerous world; instead they only attempt to shine the light on their undeserving selves. Not worth the waste of film.
August 4th, 2007 at 10:34 amThese guys might as well get used to sucking the pipe of a flame thrower at the rate they’re going because that’s the cocktail du jour in hell.
August 4th, 2007 at 11:06 amAll of these comments are f’n hillarious.
Hey Pat, please, please do not show us the next pics to surface of these two in bed with lots of tongue
August 4th, 2007 at 11:29 am“Being respectful of others” calls for listening to others’ points of view, not dismissing it out of hand if it seems to “leftist.”
September 27th, 2007 at 2:14 pmPeople in power are always pitting the powerless against each other by encouraging labels such as “right” and “left”
– “left” and “right” very near the same in the bigger scheme of things.