sean penn vs the homosexual community

perhaps one day soon the movie milk will open in fresno. it's playing elsewhere, and i know i'm pretty interested to see it. for those that don't know, it's about harvey milk, california's first openly gay politician. the movie stars sean penn as harvey milk.

penn is a very outspoken person, especially in the area of politics. he is very far left leaning. it seems that recently penn interviewed raul castro of cuba and hugo chavez of venezuela and wrote an article for the nation. the article is interesting. on the net it's four pages, and it seems like the first two pages are more about the journey while penn pontificates about the beauty of cuba. when he finally gets to interview raul castro, the piece is much more of a reflection of the whole deal, rather than dealing with any real issues. maybe penn didn't ask any questions. well, that's not entirely true. the article does move to some issues that castro seems to bring up, about long term relations between the u.s. and cuba and possibility of u.s. companies drilling off cuba for oil. after a day of getting to know him, penn finally breaks off some tough questions for castro about human rights violations that sort of get answered. the article wraps up with penn returning home to the u.s. and eventually celebrating obama's election victory.

all in all, not a bad article, but it kinda reads like a puff piece instead a good journalistic interview with the presidents of two nations.

and here is where the homosexual community enters in. over at the advocate, james kirchick rips into penn. he points out that penn is likely to gain much acclaim for his accurate and honest portrayal of milk. that's not the problem. the problem is that penn has just sat down with the leader of cuba, a man whose policies, and whose brother's policies led to the imprisonment, torture and murder of homosexuals. penn waxes nostalgically about cuba, asks about human rights, but doesn't push at all on the issue. his movie about civil rights, human rights was premiered in september of this year, so it's not like the movie wasn't already done by the time the interview was conducted. it really makes me wonder how you do a seven hour interview with someone who has actively stood against your passions and not press them on the issue. an interesting statement from the advocate article, "Penn’s credibility as an effective advocate for gay rights is also weakened by the generally illiberal policies of the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes." penn is being diminished by his association.

so where do we go from here? what do you think? should penn have gone after castro & chavez? should he have pushed harder on their track records of violating human rights?


i must disclose that i learned about these articles from the l.a. times.