Actor Sean Penn takes on a new role: reporter
I guess when you play tough guys long enough you start thinking you’re tough yourself, or yearning to be tough yourself. Or maybe your regular life—even though it involves living and working among glamorous people and being very very rich—isn’t quite exciting enough for you.
So you decide, if you’re Sean Penn, that it would be really neat to locate escaped Mexican drug lord El Chapo and interview him for Rolling Stone, that stellar publication that brought us Jackie of UVA.
Interesting that Penn could find El Chapo and the Mexican government couldn’t (or wouldn’t?). Interesting, also, that Penn’s interview appears to have “unwittingly” led to El Chapo’s (real name: Joaquin Guzman) capture by Mexican authorities, which means that Guzman’s own vanity was his undoing. Or maybe he was bored, too.
As Ann Althouse points out, most people will not be reading the Rolling Stone interview, which apparently is filled with self-indulgent rambles from Penn. I certainly won’t be reading it, anyway. I’ve got better things to do, although whether I’ll actually be doing them or not remains uncertain.
But from articles about Penn’s El Chapo interview, I’ve gleaned the following interesting tidbits about how the druglord sees his profession and his role in it:
El Chapo explains how he wound up joining the illegal drug trade.
‘Well from the age of 15 and on, where I’m from, which is the Municipality of Badiraguato, I was raised on a ranch called La Tuna in that area and up until today there are no job opportunities.
Well, its a reality that drugs destroy. Unfortunately, as I said, where I grew up there was no other way and there still isn’t a way to survive. No other way to work in our economy to be able to make a living.’
The cartel boss claims he is not to blame for people becoming addicted to drugs, saying people would continue to take narcotics if he died.
See, he had no choice. It was poverty that drove him inevitably to it. And he has no further responsibility, either, for the addiction and deaths of others, because—well, if he didn’t provide the service, someone else would have to. ¿Entiendes?
A Mexican actress was the go-between for the interview:
El Chapo was caught after contacting actors and directors about making a Narcos-style biopic about his life, Mexican officials said. It is not clear whether Penn was contacted about the movie.
The seeds for the bizarre meeting between Penn and El Chapo were sown back in 2012 after a representative for the Mexican gangster contacted [Mexican actress] del Castillo, who had posted tweets saying she had more trust in the cartel than the government…
Del Castillo later met a fixer called Espinoza – and both of them remained in contact with El Chapo’s people after his escape.
Penn later met Espinoza and suggested he meet the fugitive for a magazine article and, incredibly, the Sinaloa cartel agreed to it.
Del Castillo and Penn appear to be in some sort of trouble, but don’t sit on a hot stove waiting for them to suffer legal consequences.
Hollywood probably funds half the drugs being exported from Mexico any ways.
The trouble that Penn and del Castillo are in is nothing compared to the trouble they will be in when el Chapo’s gang discovers that the meeting with el Chapo was a put up job by Mexican drug police and the DEA. Even if it isn’t true, I sure hope that’s the version that gets back to his gang!
Neo’s writing on Sunday. Power of the Penn.
Sean Penn, the friend of the downtrodden fraud … likely he has made a enemy for life among any of El Chapos’ gang still at liberty, and who feel some loyalty to the self-indulgent psychopath, if the story gets around and is believed that he had a hand in El Chapo’s arrest … even if only inadvertent.
The only way that this sick little story of self-indulgence could be more perfect, if it were to come about that Michael Moore had been along for the ride with an intent to be the filmographer.
I tried to find the video of Sean Penn’s boat sinking as he attempted a rescue mission in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. No can find. Can anyone find it?
“I tried to find the video of Sean Penn’s boat sinking as he attempted a rescue mission in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. No can find. Can anyone find it?”
Try “Sean Penn bailing out boat katrina”. Worked for me.
Bah.
The whole thing was a movie deal disguised as an interview.
The left has a deep attraction to mass murderers. The New York Times covered for the Ukraine mass starvation and camps, Mao and Castro and Che.
It is a deeply sick lust for power and violence. It partly explains the lefts attraction to Islam and all of its violence.
Does anyone think Merkel wasn’t aware that importing millions of Muslims wouldn’t also import the Muslim rape culture. The same goes for Obama has his desire to import masses of Muslims to this country.
The left is sick, sick, sick.
Sean Penn, friend of tyrants like Hugo Chavez & Fidel Castro, may have just had his luck run out. He’s enjoyed the freedoms of America and the fruits of capitalism for a long time while never missing an opportunity to claim third world dictatorships are far superior. However, he could be on the receiving end of some outlaw justice should El Chapo’s cartel decide to punish him for his role in El Chapo’s capture. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
It should read:
The same goes for Obama and his desire to import masses of Muslims to this country.
“If I didn’t do it, somebody else would have.”
Hey, that’s the same excuse George Soros used for taking the property of Jews being sent to the gas chambers, isn’t it? Then he followed up by saying he felt “no guilt, no guilt at all”???
Yecch.
Psychopaths will always find a justification for what they do, and are ALWAYS immune to blame. Blame is for others and only dispensed from their own superior narcissistic minds onto others.
It’s fascinating how the Sean Penns out there are so attracted to the most evil scumbags on the planet. True virtue and heroism repulses them.
Loved your point, Sgt Mom. Wouldn’t it be great if Michael Moore was on the trip, and they both had to flee and go into hiding just like El Chappo, But hiding from the Cartel. THAT would make a great movie. Penn and Moore on the lam from the Cartel.
The “Snowman” strikes again.
No way he’ll be prosecuted for any of this.
Hit Penn at the box office. That is the only thing that can hurt him.
“See, he had no choice. It was poverty that drove him inevitably to it. And he has no further responsibility, either, for the addiction and deaths of others, because–well, if he didn’t provide the service, someone else would have to. ¿Entiendes?” neo
El Chapo’s obvious rationalization does not obviate the truth he uses to deny responsibility.
El Chapo’s capture will not lessen drug use among Americans, even in the slightest.
Perhaps most interesting is that drug addicts use their own version of poverty, abusive childhood, uncaring parents, etc, etc. to rationalize their own drug abuse. The abuser (the el Chapo’s) and the abused (drug addicts) are two sides of the same rationalization.
I don’t know anything about Sean Penn’s new best friend but the Netflix series “Narcos” is quite well made and worth watching.
As Truman Capote said, the better the actor, the stupider the person. The staff at Rolling Stone aren’t exactly geniuses either. Remember that they tried to make Dzokhar Tsarnev, the younger Boston Marathon bomber, into a sympathetic heart throb.