Fun with double standards

I watched the Oscars last night. Sean Penn is a strong adherent to the value of double-standards. He admonished those who would, for religious reasons, vote their conscience, and specifically mentioned the word "shame". As in: they should be ashamed for voting the way they did. If I understand him correctly, he has no problem with practicing religious intolerance in his quest for tolerance of a non-traditional definition of marriage.

The double-double (double-squared?) standard comes in when one takes note of the fact that Penn made friends last year with the dictator of Venezuela, a country which denies many basic human rights to its citizens, including homosexuals. If memory serves correctly, Penn also spent some time in Iran not too long ago.

Sean, it's a lot more safe to be out of the closet in California than in Iran or Venezuela. I'm puzzled why you choose to spend time in two nations which offer much more oppression, and much less freedom, than we have here in the US, if freedom is so important to you. Like my socks in my bachelor days, your actions and words simply do not match.

Comments

Anonymous said…

Well if you're a relativist, then there's no such thing as standards anyway. The only standard is "convenience"... They say "I'll do whatever I want and use rhetoric to support it". I'm convinced that those who use the word "tolerance" these days are using a different dictionary. To quote Enigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

February 23, 2009 at 3:30 PM

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