Celebutards: The Hollywood Hacks, Limousine Liberals, And Pandering Politicians Who Are Destroying America

FOREWORD: WHAT IS A CELEBUTARD?

ce – leb – u – tard (suh – LEB – yu – tard) noun:

1. A famous person with a grandiose notion of his own importance and contribution to the known universe.
2. A human being of sub-par intellect, oversized ego and colossal bank account, whose existence represents a drag on the food chain, waste of oxygen and severe annoyance.
3. An egregious moron. (Origin: from the Latin celebutardus Paris Hiltonus maximum Baldwinus

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“Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented pre-emptive attack on a separate, sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine.”

— Sean Penn ad in the Washington Post, October 18, 2002.

“I think life’s an irrational obsession.”

— Sean Penn in Entertainment Weekly, August 8, 1997.

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Celebutards. They walk among us but they are not of us. They eat, sleep and breed just like ordinary humans. But at some magic moment — between the time, say, a movie script wanders into the hands of a world-class celebutard such as George Clooney, and the words travel through lilting vocal chords to land on unsuspecting ears, something terrible occurs. They start to believe in their own ignorance.

A dull thinker such as Madonna becomes, in her mind and in the eyes of devoted fans, a self-appointed sage. Veritable moron Rosie O’Donnell transforms from a shrill, gay mom into a rocket scientist. Sean Penn boldly breaks bread with tyrants and enemies of his own country, vapid pop singer Sheryl Crow calls for rationing toilet paper to one sheet per sitting, and earth avenger Al Gore forgets he lost an election. Give a celebutard a microphone and a little encouragement, and suddenly, without warning, that talented performer says and does things that are really, incredibly, grotesquely dumb.

The term celebutard is believed to have first appeared in the New York Post’s Page Six gossip column, as a compound of celebrity, debutante, and retard. The word is not meant to denigrate those struggling either with youth or with genuine mental challenges. On the contrary, it is a term of art used to describe lazy and egotistical thinkers, stars equipped with abundant money, fame, idle hours and yes-men, who feel secure enough in their own influence and intelligence to create insane foreign or domestic policy in their spare time. It is a choice, rather than an affliction.

In an age in which fabulousness is too often mistaken for gravitas, we must be vigilant. Know the difference between philosophers and blowhards, between Soren Kierkegaard and Susan Sarandon. Know your celebutards.

In this book, you will find subjects familiar to readers of my column in the New York Post (Hillary, Paris), and also those who’ve lately leaped onto the national radar by demonstrating an allergic reaction to ordinary moral sense (Laurie David, the mansion-dwelling, SUV hating, ex-wife of Larry.)

Now, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! At no time since the creation of the celebustocracy has the condition been more evident, more frightening, or more psychically painful than in the case of that grandiose mental midget, the reigning King of the Celebutards, the actor Sean Penn.

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ONE: THE PENN ISN’T MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD: SEAN PENN

The brooding, tousle-haired actor, with a style sometimes compared to the late James Dean, was born Sean Justin Penn in Santa Monica, California, on August 17, 1960, the son of director Leo Penn, who was blacklisted during the Communist purge of Hollywood in the 1950s, and actress Eileen Ryan. Though from a young age he had all the makings of first-class pain-in-the-ass, the young Sean studied not politics, but auto mechanics and speech, when he briefly attended Santa Monica College, soon dropping out. With those sterling credentials, the stage was set for Penn’s meteoric rise into celeburoyalty.

Long before he won the best actor Oscar for Mystic River, Penn was cast as a world-famous husband, marrying pop singer Madonna in 1985, herself a fledgling member of the celebutard upper crust. Penn quickly distinguished himself on his wedding day by scrawling “FUCK OFF” in giant letters on the roof of their home in California to thwart photographers riding aboard helicopters, in whose direction he reputedly fired a gun. In 1987, he was jailed for beating a photographer.

The Seandonna union unraveled in spectacular fashion, which was later blamed by the Penn camp on the pop matron’s desperate quest for world domination. I guess there just wasn’t enough room for two extra-large heads in one family. During an argument over breakfast one morning in December 1988, Penn asked Madonna to leave, later telling Rolling Stone, “I made a threat that I would literally cut her hair off. She took it quite seriously” He got that right. Madonna took his words so seriously that she called the cops, and told the authorities that Penn possessed guns. A SWAT team promptly descended on the house, but by this time, Penn was gone.

This led to stories that Penn had tied her up or attacked her with a bat. One version had him force-feeding Madonna dog food. But Penn, who was charged with felony domestic assault, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. The couple divorced in 1989, and have spoken nary a discouraging word about the disastrous union since. Clearly, anger-management sessions with an experienced therapist might have benefited Penn greatly. But he took another path.

Some consumers of popular political culture have traced the birth of Penn’s monolithic celebutardistry to his father’s refusal to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee, and subsequent descent into working in television, all of which occurred before his son’s birth. Actually, the elder Penn may have set the tone in the Penn household, but for at least his early years, the budding actor seemed destined for the pampered, cranky, self-absorbed life of a Hollywood twit.

If only he’d stopped there.

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After decades of navel-gazing, violent outbursts and method acting, Penn’s political idiocy exploded, in all its mind-numbing lunacy, some time after he settled into middle-aged domesticity with actress Robin Wright Penn, with whom he had two children, both born well before they wed in 1996. The couple announced their separation, Hollywood style, to People magazine in December 2007, capping an 11-year marriage that equals centuries in celebrity years. But the Penns turned around months later and reconciled, Penn inartfully dumping the model/professional tsunami survivor Pera Nemcova in the process. Ah – true love!

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In October 2002 Penn took out a barely coherent, $56,000 ad in the Washington Post that accused President George W. Bush of threatening civil liberties in America and manipulating the media in a rush to war with Iraq.

“I beg you, help save America before yours is a legacy of shame and horror,” Penn wrote. And, “Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented pre-emptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine.”

Hanoi Sean was off and running! Jumping with both feet aboard the anti-war bandwagon, already so popular with the cult of celebutardum, Penn upped the ante by not only glorifying the regime of Saddam Hussein, but failing to make any mention of the atrocities committed by his new best friend. Had he not a hint of shame or conscience? Apparently not, because in December 2002 Penn took a three-day tour of Baghdad, where he met with government officials such as bloodthirsty henchman Tariq Aziz, and was photographed in front of giant posters depicting Saddam. With his matching moustache, sunglasses, cigarette and scowl, Penn bore an alarming resemblance to the Iraqi dictator.

At a press conference, he said, “I feel, both as an American and as a human being, the obligation to accept some level of personal accountability for the policies of my government, both those I support and any that I may not. Simply put, if there is a war or continued sanctions against Iraq, the blood of Americans and Iraqis alike will be on our hands.”

However, a month later Penn seemed to have a change of heart. He confessed to Larry King that Saddam had used him as a propaganda tool.

One would think this might spell the end of Penn’s free-lance diplomacy. It was not to be. A year later, in January 2003, Penn was back in Iraq, to check out the nation, post-American invasion. This time he came as a dilettante journalist, with credentials supplied by San Francisco Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein, famed for once having been married to actress Sharon Stone, and for nearly having his toe gnawed off by a Komodo dragon that his then-wife unwisely arranged for him to play with at the Los Angeles Zoo.

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Finding an offensive act committed by Sean Penn is like finding an orgasm at a Hollywood orgy.

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In his long and windy dispatches from Iraq published by the Chronicle upon his return, Penn bemoans the country’s occupation, even while he thanks the troops for saving his behind. “As we race through Fallujah, I take selfish comfort in the sight of black smoke billowing in the aftermath of the recent shelling of a one-story building several hundred yards off the highway, figuring that the closest guerilla fighters might currently be occupied or on the run from U.S. soldiers.” So now, the hated soldiers were Penn’s saviors.

Finding an offensive act committed by Sean Penn is like finding an orgasm at a Hollywood orgy. There are just so many, and some aren’t even fake. In August 2005 he flew to that other spoke in the axis of evil, Iran. Attending a Friday night prayer service, Penn heard 10,000 people shouting, in unison, “Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!” Did he finally get the fact that they hate us?

“It has always been clear from the Iranian point of view that the call is related to American foreign policy and does not intend to target American people,” he wrote in the Chronicle. “Many do not subscribe to a literal interpretation of the call for “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”

He did not stop there. “Where had Iran’s traumatic experience with American power begun?” Like a rape victim who blames herself for being attacked, Penn blamed America for the disturbing display.

Some of his antics resulted in slapstick, such as the time Penn turned his sights on saving his own country. In an effort to show up the administration for not doing enough for victims of hurricane Katrina, Penn, in a white flak jacket and surrounded by a large entourage that included his personal photographer, hopped into a boat on the flooded New Orleans streets, and sailed to the rescue. Or not.

Arriving, late into the disaster, Penn evidently forgot to plug a hole in the boat’s bottom. In seconds, the vessel filled with water, reported the Sun-Herald of Melbourne, Australia. This led the actor to grab a red, plastic cup and frantically bail. Then, the craft’s motor failed to start, forcing the occupants to swat the water with paddles. Seeing the boat loaded with cronies and equipment, one bystander taunted, “how are you going to get any people in that thing?”

This near-debacle was followed by a photograph that showed Penn patrolling New Orleans, carrying a shotgun. It wasn’t his!, his flack insisted, not quite able to explain why Sean felt the need to pick up a random gun. Some rescuees were nonetheless excited to be saved by a bona fide Hollywood star.

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Penn beat out a crowded field competing for the celebutard crown in August 2007, when he visited Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

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“Guess who come and got me out of the house?” Johnnie Brown, 73, said over the phone to his siter. “Sean Penn the actor! The boys were really nice.” Later, Penn was furious that his rescue efforts were widely ridiculed as publicity stunt.

Penn beat out a crowded field competing for the celebutard crown in August 2007, when he visited Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The like-minded monster called President Bush “the devil” on the floor of the United Nations a year before, and suggested moving the United Nations to Jerusalem. On Christmas Eve 2006, Chavez angered Jews all over the world when he said, “Some minorities, descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ .€.€. took all the world’s wealth for themselves.” This must have thrilled Penn’s Jewish family on his father’s side.

Chavez courted Penn, praising him for his open letter to the White House, in which he described Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “criminally obscene people.”

“I found him a very fascinating guy,” Penn told David Letterman. “He’s done incredible things for the 80 percent of the people who are poor there.” Not a word about Venezuela’s human rights abuses. Or Chavez’s squelching the freedom of the press. In fact, Penn excused the shutting down of a TV station, saying it had called for Chavez’s assassination “so he just did not re-up their license.”

I began wondering if Sean Penn, who has the means and stupidity to cavort with tyrants bent on destroying this country, could be tried for treason. But I learned that a charge of treason, while a tantalizing notion, is not an option, since we are not presently at war with Venezuela or Iran and Saddam Hussein is long gone. Besides, this country, with all its warts, is far more tolerant of those who rail against it, and quite a bit more protective of those who would do it harm, than any of the tin pot dictators that Penn so admires.

The only recourse the public has against this captain of the celebutards is simply to refuse to see his films.

This is an excerpt from Andrea Peyser’s just released “Celebutards” which is available for purchase at Amazon.com.