Why Penn Should Stick to Acting

For anyone who has trawled through a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed or epically long magazine piece by Sean Penn and longed for a little Fast Times at Ridgemont High, George Packer’s latest blog post is a must-read. Using Penn’s December 15 Nation cover story on Venezuela and Cuba as a jumping-off point, Packer delivers a dead-on analysis of Penn’s skills as a thespian—and a journalist. “I saw Milk the other night and thought: this man is the greatest actor of his generation,” Packer writes. But he adds: “Penn’s moonlighting shows a kind of contempt for journalism, which turns out to be rather difficult to do well.”