From Washington to Hollywood observers wonder if he is dancing on a string of his own weave

By Jeffrey Jolson

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 8/5/07 — Like Jane Fonda before him, actor Sean Penn’s meeting this week with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is raising questions over how much of his stance is justifiable protest and how much is just used as a propaganda tool for anti-American sentiment overseas.

While polls show it is fairly common to be anti-war and anti-Bush across the U.S. as in Hollywood, it is not clear whether Penn’s visit served to underline the actor’s Iraq war message or he was used as propaganda poster-boy for socialist Chavez, whose vilification of Bush is one of his running platforms.

The Oscar-winning actor has also visited Iraq and Iran, yet media-savvy Chavez seems to have taken dancing Mr. Penn in public for political purposes to a new level.

Actress Maria Conchita Alonso, who grew up in Venezuela, said Penn is lending support to a “totalitarian” leader who wants increasing control of society — a charge Chavez denies. She said she respects Penn as an actor, but hopes he “comes to his senses and he realizes that he’s being used.”

Chavez is milking Penn’s visit for all it is worth. “That man has opposed the war in Iraq with all his strength, and not only that, he went to Baghdad … and now he comes here. He’s going around touring the ‘axis of evil,’” Chavez said with a chuckle.

Penn’s tour is being likened to actress Jane Fonda’s visit to North Vietnam during the Vietnam war. In retrospect it did little to hasten the end of that equally unpopular war and her career suffered more downs than ups. Sixteen years after the 1972 visit and the statements that Ho Chi Minh radioed to U.S. troops, she went on “20/20” and apologized for her judgment and allowing herself to be used as a propaganda vehicle.

“I would like to say something, not just to Vietnam veterans in New England, but to men who were in Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of things that I said or did,” she told Barbara Walters. “I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I’m . . . very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to apologize to them and their families.”

Sean Penn applauded President Chavez as the Venezuelan leader lambasted the Bush administration and demanded an end to war in Iraq. Chavez is remembered by some for when he went before the United Nations and called Bush a “devil.”

Chavez met privately with the 46-year-old actor for two hours Thursday, praising him as being “brave” for urging Americans to impeach President Bush. Venezuela is the fourth-largest foreign supplier of oil to U.S. and he wants to pursue nuclear technology, so there is a lot riding on the pipeline for American here.

Chavez said he and Penn discussed the question of “why the (U.S.) empire attacks Chavez so much,” saying Venezuela’s oil wealth is a key reason. He also said Washington is “afraid that the people of the United States will learn the real truth” about the situation in Venezuela, citing his social programs for the poor.

“In the name of the peoples of the world, President Bush, withdraw the troops from Iraq. Enough already with so much genocide,” Chavez said before an auditorium packed with his red-clad supporters and the media.

Chavez read aloud from a recent open letter by Penn to President Bush in which the actor condemned the Iraq war and called for Bush to be impeached, saying the president along with Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are “villainously and criminally obscene people.”

Chavez has stated “The American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its hegemonistic system of domination, and we cannot allow him to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.”

Hollywood Today was told that Sean Penn said “he was working as a freelance journalist, following up on reporting stints in Iraq and Iran”.

Sean Penn has a new black-and-white animation, highly stylized and impressionistic about growing up in Teheran and Vienna. The narrator Marjane Satrapi was schooled in Vienna and returns to Iran harsh Islamic rule.

Penn is in post-production and will star along side Harrison Ford, Ray Liotta and Ashley Judd in “Crossing Over” a multi-character canvas about immigrants of different nationalities struggling to achieve legal status in Los Angeles. The film deals with the border, document fraud, the asylum and green card process, work-site enforcement, naturalization, the office of counter terrorism and the clash of cultures.