Piano Wire Puppeteers -- Sean Penn

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

By SEAN PENN

http://counterpunch.com/penn12072007.html

---SNIP---

Let me share something with you. Late one night in Caracas, I met with a couple of fellas, mercenaries I think you call them. Goddamit, I keep doing that. I mean “contractors.” They were Brits, their specialty: drug interdiction. These two were no great fans of Chavez. They called him “radical” and expected him to fall to an assassin’s bullet within the year. Like him or not, he had the cash to win their acceptance of his employ. And working alongside the Venezuelan military, these two, based in Caracas, had played the mountainous and jungled border between Columbia and Venezuela. A zone rife with paramilitaries, FARC guerillas, and mer…scratch that, contractors. What I was told that evening in Caracas by these piano wire puppeteers was that they had never worked for a government whose investment in drug interdiction was so genuine. “Yeah,” said one of the Brits, “I gotta give the bastard Chavez that.”

But I was talking about the Constitution. Most importantly, our own. And what an odd week it has been. Our culture is engrained with a tradition that blurs the line between what is right, what is just and what is constitutional, with what is a scam. That tradition is the cult of personality. What can TV sell, what kind of crap will we buy. And at what point are we buying and selling our rights, our pride, our flag, our children, and succumbing to meaningless slogans that are ultimately pure titles for un-Americanism. How do we know what’s American and what is not? Because John Wayne tells us so? Because Sean Penn tells us so? Susan Sarandon? Bill O’Reilly? Michael Moore? Senator Bull? Or Senator Shit? Ann “my bowel expenditure” Coulter? No. It’s our Constitution. We don’t use it just to win. We depend on it because it’s the only “us” worth being. And because it’s our children’s inheritance from our shared forefathers and the traditions that really do speak best of our country...

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A brief chat with Larry King (not sure how current this is):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=VH0Fr5TccMM

[Bicoastal]

1. There is no such word as "jungled"...

...and there are plenty of other odd mistakes as well.

Smart guy, and progressive as hell, but can't write worth shit.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

2. His heart and mind are in the right place...

...and he's genuine, not just talk, he's a real activist -- puts his personal time and money into his progressive ideals. I respect and admire him for that.

Here's a brief cut of him on C-SPAN in March of this year:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=UwOLWp9Hlj0

[Breeze54]

4. Definition of Jungled

http://www.lexic.us/definition-of/Jungled#1

... the jungled hillside, ...


--------------------

jun·gle (jnggl)

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/jungled

n.
1. Land densely overgrown with tropical vegetation.
2. A dense thicket or growth.
3. A dense, confused mass; a jumble.
4. Something made up of many confused elements; a bewildering complex or maze:
sorting through the jungle of regulations.
5. A place or milieu characterized by intense, often ruthless competition or struggle
for survival: the corporate jungle.
6. Slang A place where hoboes camp.
(Ultimately from Sanskrit jagalam, desert, wasteland, uncultivated area, from jagala-, desert, waste.)

jungly (-gl) adj.

--------------

http://www.answers.com/topic/bataan?cat=travel

"Balanga is the provincial capital. A mountainous, thickly jungled region,
it has some of the best bamboo forests in the Philippines."

---------

It's really to bad you focused on one word and not the whole meaning of what he wrote.

[Bicoastal]

5. OK, OK.

It looks like a few dictionaries online and off have the word, although many do not--it's a pretty recent invention, created by taking an old noun and turning it into an adjective. (We've done the same thing with tourist and "touristy," which hasn't been around that long either.) But I concede the point--"jungly" is indeed a word.

What can I say? As a writer, I tend to fixate on these things. I never correct people's English when they post anonymously on the Web (unless they ask for it by calling me an idiot with every other word misspelled.) However, when someone posts authoritatively on a blog or online journal, I can't help but notice that some people don't always place that much care in what they write if it's just going to be seen online.

[nealmhughes]

6. He's obviously writing as if in a conversation, or so I would think.

It's a familiar method to develop rapport between the author and the reader. (Although Derrida might claim "to develop rapport between the text and the reader"!)

[acmavm]

11. Yeah, his grammar is the real issue here, right?

Sheesh!

[Mnemosyne]

3. A hero after Katrina also. Good guy. n/t

[xchrom]

7. i'm giving this a jungled recommend.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

8. How tropical of you -- my parrot thanks you...

...my fruit bat thanks you, my giant mosquitoes thank you, and my marching red ants thank you.

[xchrom]

9. what? -- no thobbing, lush, overgrown flora? please give my regards to your fruit bats.

[rosesaylavee]

10. I'll give this the 5th recommend simply because of this descriptive phrasing:

"Ann “my bowel expenditure” Coulter"

I have no idea what that means - but it invites all sorts of odd images, doesn't it?

:rofl:

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

12. I thought that was pretty creative too...

...I tried not to think on the imagery of it for very long.