By: E&P Staff In a full-page ad in today's (May 30)
New York Times filled with thousands of words of tightly-packed type from top to bottom, actor Sean Penn explained and defended his controversial trip to Baghdad last winter that has resulted, as he notes, in charges of "treason" against him by critics.
The advertisement, which appears on page A-11 under the headline "Kilroy's Still Here," ends with the single tag line, "For information or comments: Clyde1234@attbi.com."
Penn takes pains to describe how his trip to Baghdad in the pre-war period (he accompanied columnist Norman Solomon) was "misrepresented" by the U.S. and Iraqi press, even though "I'm neither a peace activist nor a partisan politico." He said he took the trip partly because there were "troubling questions about our nation's understanding of this pending conflict. Its most accessible information sources were the corporately sponsored and largely conservative media outlets." And he worried about "what effect U.S. decisions today might have on my children's tomorrows."
Indeed, he opens and closes his argument with references to his daughter. The message starts with him sitting in the parking lot of a burger joint with his 11-year-old daughter in October 2002 listening to radio reports of President Bush alleging links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda (which have not really panned out, as it happens). Near the end he is with his daughter, now 12, at home, on the day President Bush makes his Top Gun landing on the aircraft carrier. Penn notes: "I didn't need a second viewing of this one. Tom Cruise was fine by me."
The ad copy closes with Penn urging readers to "participate in an educated democracy" by writing letters to Congress, donating to charity or writing "a piece in
The New York Times." By whatever means "we must speak," he wrote. "We must question ... And soon, we must do one more thing ... We must vote." Then his daughter breaks in again and asks Penn to drive her to the movies, and the ad ends: "Duty calls."
Whatever the merits of Penn's argument, it may be undercut by the fact that the type is so dense -- broken only by an even harder-to-read black box with a long 1939 quote from William Saroyan that begins, "In the time of your life, live. ... Seek goodness everywhere. ..."
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