Sean Penn: skaaahlur

With hearty thanks to Malcolm for linking to an impassioned-- and entirely incoherent-- HuffPo article written by one Sean Penn, acteur extraordinaire and scholar manqué. Malcolm remarks:

Move over, Tom Friedman! Here, from Sean Penn, is a late entry for Worst Writing of 2012.

It really is just unspeakably awful. Enjoy!

Unspeakably awful it is. I had never read anything written by Mr. Penn before, so I went into the experience with only Malcolm's caveat in mind. Here's how I described, in Malcolm's comments, what it was like to read Mr. Penn:

If anything, Penn’s spiel felt almost exactly like something written by one of my Korean students—the weird fragments, run-ons, malapropisms, and non sequiturs all seemed so familiar.

And now, for your delectation, a sample of Mr. Penn's award-winning prose:

President Barack Obama, who this week so eloquently spoke for America's heart and its solidarity with those who suffered incomprehensible human losses at Sandy Hook Elementary School, has reminded us of that spirit of American leadership which so rightly gives us ownership in saying "I'm proud to be an American." Still, while level heads begin to envision the uphill battle for legislations of necessary gun controls, we Americans and our leadership, must be diligent to the nature of the human brain.

Indeed that thing upon our neck was not created decoratively, and in using our heads with our hearts, must also use our eyes, and set them clearly, not upon one healing mechanism, not upon one prevention, but upon all those connective dots that can allow future generations the possibility of a freedom including peace and safety.

This can, and is, being very easily exampled with newly invigorated discussions with attention on the recognition and treatment of mental health, and certainly that is a priority. And to be responsible to that priority, we too have to recognize its applicability to the mental health of our American community at large.

We are an unhappy country. There is a plague of loneliness and isolation. But for the way video games and in-home electronic communication and entertainment may compliment isolation, those activities might otherwise be similarly represented by the backyard cowboy and soldier games of yesterday. Face to face community engagement is on the wane. We have to recognize the economic hardships that lead to depressions, the fear that leads to the breakdown of intimacies, and the global warming to the destruction of homes and lives in the Northeast. And when we wrap all of these things and their cousins in a bundle, only hard truths will heal our country, and protect our children.

Yes, Sean. Yes. We understand only too well. Your brain sits directly upon your neck.


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