Penn steps up criticism of Bush
10/6/06
In the wake of 9/11 and the start of the Iraq war, it was taboo for a celebrity to criticize President Bush in public. (Look what happened to the Dixie Chicks, who were ostracized when lead singer Natalie Maines made critical comments about the president at a London concert in 2003.)
But these days, it’s become de rigueur among the far left-leaning
members of the Hollywood set to bash Bush – in the strongest terms
possible.
Among the most vocal is actor Sean Penn, who has
stepped up his rhetoric against the administration in recent weeks. (He
called Bush a “Beelzebub” at the Toronto International Film Festival.)
The actor sent a message Monday to 1,200 people gathered for the World
Can’t Wait: Drive Out the Bush Regime! meetings in New York and San
Francisco. (The group was formed last year by activists who have called
the Bush administration “more dangerous than Nazi Germany.”)
“This is an administration that advocates torture, deceives the public,
spends billions of dollars on a failed war,” Penn wrote in a message to
the crowd, which was read by actor Mark Ruffalo.
“This is an administration where in the year of Katrina, Exxon Mobil
claimed the highest profit margin in the history of world business. It
is an administration that belittles, demeans, deceives and indeed kills
our brothers, our sisters, our sons and our daughters.”
Ruffalo, who stars alongside Penn in the current release “All the King’s Men,” then made a statement of his own.
“I don’t want to be up here today, but I feel I have exhausted the way
we have been taught to affect change in the way our government conducts
itself,” Ruffalo said. “I have voted, I have called, I have written
letters, I have given of myself with my time and my money, and still we
have a government that refuses to respect the Constitution.”