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PENN DEFENDED
Douglas Brinkley rescues Sean Penn, according to the New York Daily News:
Sean Penn threw himself into the rescue efforts. But no sooner had he borrowed a boat to rescue people than some Aussie journo was reporting that the boat had sprung a leak - supposedly prompting locals to snicker as the Oscar-winner bailed it out.
Douglas Brinkley, the presidential historian who teaches at Tulane University, was at Penn’s side. “There was never a leak,” he tells us. “The boat was overloaded with people. It got some water in it, as boats usually do.
"I witnessed him rescuing up to 40 people,” says Brinkley, who was assigned by Rolling Stone editor Will Dana to write about New Orleans’ recovery. “He was up to his waist in toxic muck .... I’m not going to comment on Sean’s trips to Iraq or Iran, but in this case, he was an American hero."
If Penn actually did some good, consider my earlier mockery unreservedly withdrawn; also, complete apologies are offered. But did he really save drowning people? And is star-struck Brinkley a reliable source on matters Penn?
Several things become clear when reading Richard T. Kelly’s Sean Penn: His Life and Times. . . . Unflinching in his artistic integrity, Penn over the last two decades has forged fast friendships with such gifted actors as Jack Nicholson [etc., etc.] ... Penn championed the underdog even at an early age, growing up in the fashionable communities of Woodland Hills, Sherman Oaks, and Malibu ... A staunch advocate of prison reform, Penn would have become a civil rights lawyer if he hadn’t been an actor ... And one thing is for certain. Whether he is acting, directing, writing, or dissenting, he will do it his way, with the least amount of negotiation possible.
With all due respect, I’d never trust a fellow American who uses “journo.”
Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2005 09 07 at 01:19 PM • permalinkTo repeat the point somebody else made a few threads down: Is there any tangible evidence of those 40 people? Photographs? Recorded comments? Surely there must be something, given that photographers were obviously on hand (and I don’t even mean Penn’s “personal photographer” - let’s allow for that to be bogus too, like the “boat immediately sprung a leak” part).
Maybe Brinkley’s a double-agent of the VRWC though, and his outlandish claim is designed to cause suspicion and help make Penn into an even bigger laughingstock when all is said and done. I mean, just like his Kerry biography “unwittingly” helped to sink Kerry’s presidential bid…
Hey, I’m not a local, and I snickered plenty. And, oooooooo, I love that “Oscar winner” thrown in for good measure (not just bailing, apparently, but award-winning bailing). If he did do good, then “good on him” as the “locals” might say. But I, too, find Douglas Brinkley’s gushing prose a little hard to take, especially for a historian. To borrow from H.L. Mencken in another context, he compares Penn favorably to the rising of the sun and the aurora borealis - and that way does not lie acuracy.
D*mm*t, I want facts!
On the subject of “some Aussie journo”, ( who in the Australian is attributed by “From correspondents in New Orleans” ), how do we figure out which exact human that is, and contact him?
I’d like to see S.A.J. directly notified that his reporting has been questioned (by a notable authority), and give him a chance to respond?
PS: On the subject of vague authorship, that article at the Standard, by “Scrapbook” is about as satisfyingly biting as Steyn. Don’t miss.
Posted by zeppenwolf on 2005 09 07 at 02:51 PM • permalinkDitto to Polly’s comment. Note: Brinkley was at Penn’s side and the boat was overloaded. Note: the picture of Penn bailing shows 3 people in the boat. Must’ve been a pretty small boat to be overloaded with three people in it. I guess the puny income of Penn from his public service as a movie actor couldn’t subsidize anything larger. Note: Brinkley personally saw Penn rescue 40 people? Then Brinkley obviously stayed in the overloaded boat. Had Brinkley given over his seat, then, Penn could have saved 60 or 70 people—oops, forgot the photographer--make that 90 or 100? Or perhaps Brinkley and Penn’s photographer were somehow vital to the rescue process? And, isn’t it fascinating, that Penn’s choices for a rescue team were a photographer and a journalist? Anyone smell a book deal here? I wish Tim would continue to exercise well-justified skepticism about this stunt. I continue to find despicable Penn’s approach to “relief” and now credit Brinkley with all the integrity in this case that he previously earned in pimping for John Kerry.
Speaking of selfless celebrities, there’s a story over at Instapundit about Geraldo Rivera:
‘Geraldo Rivera arrives in a Fox News truck. An elderly woman with blond hair grips his elbow. She’s wearing thick dark glasses and a pink shirt. He carries her small white dog in his arms. He’s wearing thigh-high waders unzipped to below his knees. We shake hands. “Her relative called one of our stations,” Geraldo tells me, explaining how that call went to another station, and then another, and finally to him.
The woman had been stranded in her home for six days. Geraldo picked up the woman and her dog and brought them here. The woman looks frail on his arm, though not as bad perhaps as a lady collapsed on a chair nearby, unable to move. Or a woman in a wheelchair being lifted from the truck, carrying her prosthetic leg on her lap.
“That’s the second time he brought her here,” one of the doctors tells me, nodding toward Geraldo.
“What?”
“They did two takes. Geraldo made that poor woman walk from the Fox News van to the heliport twice. Both times carrying her dog.”
“Are you serious?” I ask. He says he is.’
Perhaps later, Mr. Penn and his entourage can ‘recreate’ their rescue of 40 for the cameras.
Posted by Bruce Lagasse on 2005 09 07 at 06:58 PM • permalinkOh come on. The man brought a photographer, a biographer, and enough sycophants to swamp the boat with water. This was a photo op, nothing more.
If he had charity and selfless assistance to his fellow man in mind, he could have brought one boat and two life guards to help him rescue people. Then he would have stood a better chance of rescuing a good number of people. If that was truly his goal.
This is the type of behavior that engenders cynicism.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 09 07 at 06:58 PM • permalinkI want to see the pictures his goddammed photographer took of these rescued people. Douglas Brinkley has zero credibility with me after his Kerry book.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 09 07 at 07:45 PM • permalinkPenn championed the underdog even at an early age, growing up in the fashionable communities of Woodland Hills, Sherman Oaks, and Malibu ...
duh…
Hate to say this: but a lot of Americans actually not only come from working class families, but they manage to help themselves...so Penn gets all the publicity, but the Okie Baptist lady who made 3500 sandwiches last Saturday, or the many Cajun boaters who risked their lives to save people got no publicity…
what’s wrong with this picture?Well, he would have become a lawyer if he’d ever finished high school…
by the way… how many drowning people can tread water for a week waiting for Sean Penn?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 09 07 at 07:58 PM • permalinkWell, apparently the Okie Baptist lady and the Cajun boaters didn’t have a red cup. That seems to be the key here.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 09 07 at 08:06 PM • permalinkwronwright—Our Dark Master Rove didn’t want to risk subjecting the good people to lefty harassment. So Penn got the only red cup, to keep him
risiblevisible.Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 09 07 at 08:35 PM • permalinkWow - they’re getting all the A-list celebs - when are Grace Knight from the Eurogliders and Doc Neeson arriving?
Posted by Pig Head Sucker on 2005 09 07 at 08:51 PM • permalinkIf Sean Penn really wanted to help, he would have spent some of his considerable lucre and sent fifty boats with fifty competent people in them to rescue people. The fact that he was in one small boat with his personal entourage --- which conveniently included a photographer --- speaks volumes, none of it complimentary. So save your retractions, Tim.
You need to tell your friends that it was actually the Queen in the play-within-the-play who “doth protest too much,” not Hamlet. Though Sean Penn is quite the drama queen by all reports so it still fits.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 09 07 at 10:31 PM • permalinkThe “locals” are still sniggering at the clown.
“The Little red Cup that Saved N’awlins” is the working title.
Donations gratefully accepted.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2005 09 08 at 12:20 AM • permalinkRebeccaH, #25 - I couldn’t agree more.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2005 09 08 at 12:22 AM • permalinkA week after the flood.
The levee is plugged.
The pumps are running.
The National Guard is in the city.
Coast Guard, Army, Navy and Air Force helicopters are pulling people off rooftops.
Food and supplies are reaching the people.
A multimillionaire actor shows up, personal photographer and writer in tow, and his idea of how to help is to strap on his body armor, climb into an aluminum WalMart skiff, not quite drown, help a couple of confused old people wade ashore…
... and we are supposed to praise this posturing oaf? As far as I’m concerned, he’s not different from serial rescuer Geraldo, who brought the same old woman into a shelter at least twice to make sure all the cameras caught it…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 09 08 at 12:42 AM • permalinkSean Penn couldn’t have put 40 people in that little, itty bitty boat, even one at a time. His ego is too big for that to be possible.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 09 08 at 01:48 AM • permalinkPersonally, I commend anyone who acts rather than sits, but then I thought: ‘Yeah, but how far does his activism actually extend?
And now another crew member of The Penntanic has been revealed: Matt Taibbi. Between him and Douglas Brinkley, Penn put together a real A-Team for his rescue mish, huh?
Posted by Jim Treacher on 2005 09 08 at 02:28 PM • permalinkNo need to apologise, Tim. Brinkley has revealed himself as the fool and blowhard the Tulane faculty has long considered him. “No leak”, the idiot Brinkley huffs, “the boat was overloaded with people."What people? A close look at the photo revals Brinkley, Penn, Penn’s personal camera man and lots of baggage, which might very well have contained sumptuous cajun cookin’s for the 40 unidentified persons Brinkley claims were rescued or might have been if there had been any room in the boat for one of them. How come, with his own personal cameraman do we not have pictures and identities of the 40? Oh, Brinkley the historian refuses to comment on Pens sucking up to dictators and anti-semites as well as his consistently expressed hatred of America. Might spoil Brinley’s published historical version of Penn as the hero of the underdog but it completes the picture of Brinkley as the suck up to a jackass.
Penn would have become a civil rights lawyer if he hadn’t been an actor
Tim would have been Gandhi if he hadn’t been a blogger.
Hitler would have been a rabbi if he wasn’t der Fuehrer.
Dick Cheney would have been a Greenpeace activist if he hadn’t worked for Haliburton.
Sadaam would have one the Nobel Peace Prize if he hadn’t got that dictator gig.
Mother Teresa would have been a skanky crack bitch if she hadn’t been a soul sister.
Michael Moore would be a respected film director if he wasn’t a lying scumbag.
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One would have hoped, after the cavalcade of buffoonery provided by our ‘entertainment’ industry during the 2004 election season, that our actors and musicians would go back to being the overpaid court jesters they are and leave running the world to the adults.
Such hope would have been misplaced.