Sean Penn Says Reporter Should Go To Jail For Calling Hugo Chavez A Dictator
Well, Hugo Chavez is a dictator, but I guess truth isn’t a defense when you’re talking about one of Penn’s heroes.
First Amendment be damned . . . If Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn had his way, any journalist who called Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a dictator would quickly find himself behind bars.
Penn, appearing on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday, defended Chavez during a segment in which he detailed his work with the JP Haitian Relief Organization, which he co-founded.
“Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it” said Penn, winner of two Best Actor Academy Awards. “And this is mainstream media, who should — truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.”
One wonders if Penn would be willing to be held to his own standards of political speech. After all, Penn once called President Bush America’s “most devastating enemy.” And worse. He also once called Bush “a Beelzebub.”
Now, I disagree with Penn on both points. I think Bush’s policies were worthy of criticism, but I don’t think he was an enemy of America (a traitor, in essence) or any sort of a devil. But I also don’t think that Penn should be jailed for casting such absurd aspersions.
Because unlike Penn, I believe in free speech.
