Not a gaucho, just gauche

Sean Penn, ‘serious’ actor and douchebag extraordinaire, has turned up in South America (maybe he believed it to be the Deep South) and thus, At Close Range, weighed into the contretemps over the Falklands, explicitly endorsing the Argentinean version of events, leaving many British scowling at The Game he’s playing.  His argument, which has all the substance of Milk, would make him a Dead Man Walking were he ever to set foot in Port Stanley now, after condemning the islanders without even bothering to meet them.  No doubt when he met President Cristina Kirchner Up at the Villa, he was in A State of Grace at being admitted into the presence of a national leader (not the first time given his attempt to parley with Saddam Hussein).  Thinking She’s So Lovely, he failed to realise he was proving her very willing ‘useful idiot’.

Both in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, Penn bandied about terms that he had been trained to deploy such as ‘archaic’ and ‘colonialist’.  What is this – the Communist International in 1921?  Suggesting ‘the UK’ (the phrase being overly politically correct) has all the faded imperial grandeur as to be found at Persepolis is far from Crackers; it’s stating the obvious.  But implying that the British are the Bad Boys and that their delusions leave them up a Mystic River without a paddle, is simply plain rude.  We all have our limits and Penn stepped over The Thin Red Line, given he has no connection either to Argentina or Britain (a failed marriage to Madonna doesn’t count, despite her bigging up Englishness a few years ago).  To cite the Casualties of War of both combatants in 1982, including those with The Weight of Water above them, in criticising the brief sojourn of Prince William is also insulting (plus let us not forget who the aggressor was then).  Wills is engaged in search and rescue, not search and destroy with All the King’s Men.  On that note, for Argentina to say the second in line to the throne wear the ‘conqueror’s uniform’ makes me rack my brains for all those lands subjugated by search and rescue teams.

Penn’s intervention must the inhabitants of the Falklands go “What Just Happened?”  He appears in The Interpreter – a drama based in and around the United Nations building in New York – and he thinks this makes him an expert in international relations.  In most regards, Michael’s Moore’s Stupid White Men is a coruscating and funny read, but his section dealing with non-American disputes is full of glib one-sided claptrap that would exacerbate these situations.  He is a dedicated polemicist though; Penn, in trying to emulate Bono and others, is just a windbag.  Never mind The Assassination of Richard Nixon, a film entitled The Assassination of Sean Penn would do good box office in Port Stanley’s cinema.

If he had even 21 grams of sense, Penn would acknowledge how absurd he is.  Should the USA hand back the vast tracts of land they confiscated from the Mexicans in the middle of the nineteenth century (more recent than the British resettlement of the Falklands in 1833)?  If so, Penn should be fine over losing his Malibu estate.  Maybe the new Mexican owners could bulldoze it to make way for a new road and rename it Carlito’s Way.  That would be Sweet and Lowdown.  We’re No Angels but all countries in the world have spotty reputations at some points in their history.  Westminster is not going to do a U Turn on the right to self-determination of the islanders, who have The Tree of Life of their families dating back considerable generations.  The Pledge of allegiance to London is not practised but they want sincerely to remain attached to British.  The Argentineans can call the place Las Malvinas if they not want, but the majority of the rest of the world will call it the Falklands, just as they use the term The English Channel rather than La Manche.

Given Buenos Aires is exactly on the other side of the world from a certain Chinese metropolis, would it be a Shanghai Surprise to find Penn burnishing his left-wing credentials by demanding the bourgeois democracy of the Republic of China on Taiwan return immediately to the People’s Republic of China of the mainland?  After all, who bothers about the views of those who live there?  Then it would be off to Pyongyang, where he miraculously survived in Team America: World Police, so he can pay his condolences to Kim Jong-Un, the son of his good friend Kim Jong-Il and then extol the virtues of hereditary communism.

Yes, I know I missed a few films of or related to Penn.  So sue me.

In all this, I say, good on you Ben Fogle, in challenging Penn to a debate (the latter will decline for he knows far too little of the issue to argue effectively) on the south Atlantic shenanigans.  Fogle would send him to a Penn-itentiary AKA the house of corrections.  For Fogle has done some in-depth study of the history of these rocky outcroppings.  He would know that the British settled on West Falkland in 1765, almost half a century before the existence of Argentina, with the Spanish on East Falkland.  The British occupants withdrew in 1784 on grounds of cost but never relinquished their claim to the islands as evinced by the bronze plaque they left there.  In 1820, the Spanish also left, effectively handing the rights to Britain.  When the Argentines made moves to create a colony, they requested the permission of the British.  Why would they do so if they did not recognise British overlordship of these islands?  With the arrival of new British settlers in 1833, tensions simmered with their fellow pioneers from Argentina until some of the latter murdered some of the former, leading to the expulsion of the entire Spanish-speaking colony.  Throughout it all, dating back to 1765, the British have had a presence in either flesh or metal and always in law.