Posted by
Billy email MADBillyD@aol.com on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 8:34:09 PM
In October 2008, Raul Castro granted his first interview as president of Cuba – and one of the very few he has ever given. The lucky recipient was not one of the dozen accredited reporters based in Havana. Nor was it a journalist who has covered the Miami/Havana beat, nor one of the hundreds of requests from representatives from media organizations and academia who have filed requests with the Foreign Ministry. Rather, Raul Castro’s first interlocutor would be the actor/director, Sean Penn, who periodically weighs in on politics.
Penn had just winged in on a Venezuelan military jet from Isla Margarita, the picturesque island near Caracas, having had spent two days with a convivial Hugo Chavez. With him were the writer Christopher Hitchens and historian Douglas Brinkley, whom Penn had invited to accompany him, presumably to lend gravitas to his efforts. The three had hoped to reprise their luck with Raul Castro and, according to Penn, seemed to have been promised as much. ( ‘Without Fidel’ — Hollywood’s Useful Idiots Go to Cuba)
But the gods – in the form of Fidel, who orchestrated the event, chose only the movie star. Penn had met the Comandante in 2005 and the two quickly took a shine to each other. Moreover, Penn became fast friends with Chavez, of whom he was wont to say, “Chávez may not be a good man, but he may well be a great one.” Penn was now eager for an interview with [Raúl] the new president,” according to his account of the trip published in the left-leaning journal, The Nation.
(I might care more about what Penn wrote in filmed about Cuba and her evil leaders if Penn had talked to people who left Cuba so they could enjoy freedom or if he would report on the souls who have been killed or forced in to prisons because they spoke up against the evil government of Cuba or wanted to follow their faith.)