Sunday, February 22, 2009

The Idiot Who Got Me Off Facebook for a Night

Sean Penn is a tool. I knew this would happen. I got my copy of Entertainment magazine a few weeks ago with the Oscars preview. The editors correctly predicted that Penn would probably get "a lot of sympathy in the wake of the Prop-8 vote" and win Best Actor.

The irony in that suggestion is incredible.

It would seem to me that to win "Best Actor in a Leading Role" you would have to be "the best actor in a leading role." Now, I'll come clean. I don't know that I've seen any of the films for which the men nominated in this category were nominated. This commentary isn't about that. If Mr. Spicoli truly was the "best," then he deserved to win. However, if Entertainment magazine's pre-Oscar summary of the situation has any merit, then Penn wasn't the "best" actor, but simply the "Best Role by Which to Make a Hollywood-esque Political Statement."

You be the judge.

I am inclined to believe that the uber-liberal secularists in Hollywood selected Penn in order to give him the pulpit from which to lob these gems:

"For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think it's a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect on their great shame and their shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that support...We've got to have equal rights for everyone."
Yeah, Jeff Spicoli. I saw the signs of hatred. Those signs of "acceptance" and "inclusion" and "tolerance" that were lifted high in San Jose as the home of a Prop 8 and their car were vandalized. I saw the "love" and "understanding" as the Los Angeles LDS Temple was picketed and elderly temple patrons were jeered, mocked and profaned. These "courageous warriors" for "civil rights" were conspicuously absent, however, from locales associated with other more sizable voting blocs who opposed Prop 8 in California. For example:

- African Americans
- Latinos
- Catholics (practicing...)
- Evangelicals
- Muslims

Especially that last one. Why not picket a mosque? Why pick on the LDS church? You and your (m)ilk, Mr. Penn, are cowards. When you have no ideological leg upon which to stand, you shout louder, instead of understanding the merits of an argument. Yours is the intolerant, undemocratic, anti-social, non-inclusive, ostracizing side. Your loudmouthing from the Oscar stage ("You commie, homo-loving sons of guns") simply belies your own shallowness.

Watch the career trajectory of Mr. Penn. The more he started spouting off against conservative values, the more Hollywood and Cannes love him. His secularized agnosticism is certainly indicative of an apple that has fallen quite from his Russian/Lithuanian Jewish and Irish/Italian Catholic tree.

But all that worship and reverence of God has no place in Hollywood.

So Penn got me off Facebook for a night--to post this. When an agent of intolerance points the finger at others and accuses them of his own crime, it's time to tune out. Penn's hollow argument may play well in the Kodak Theater, but preaching to the choir comes across as so cowardly.