This is Why He's an Actor and Not a Writer

The airwaves have been full today of actor Sean Penn's soaring rhetoric on the Iraq War. His remarks were given at a rally in Oakland led by Rep. Barbara Lee:

Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn was the star attraction at a town hall meeting today in Oakland, where hundreds of people gathered to denounce the war in Iraq and call for an immediate withdrawal of American troops.

Neither Penn nor Rep. Barbara Lee, the Oakland Democrat who has opposed the war since before it began four years ago, offered much in the way of specifics for ending the conflict, and they were largely preaching to the choir. The enthusiastic and occasionally boisterous crowd of 800 or so crammed into the Grand Lake Theatre wildly cheered as Penn excoriated President Bush.

"You and your smarmy pundits -- and the smarmy pundits you have in your pocket -- can take your war and shove it," Penn said.

How about that for creative editing? Do you notice the "--" that I've marked in red for you? Here's what SFGate.com left out of Penn's comments. You can insert these words at the red "--":

Those who bathe in the moisture of your soiled and blood-soaked underwear...

Why do you suppose SFGate left out the juicy part? Good taste? Maybe, but more likely they knew if that ran that part of the quote people would quickly realize that Penn is a stark-raving nutjob and quite possibly a psychosocial deviant.

Now you know why he's an actor and not a writer. I'm sure he was quite proud of himself when he wrote those lilting lyrics (you can hear it on the audio), but c'mon, how stupid was that? Penn is little more than a glittering jewel of colossal ignorance.