guest post by Gor-Lak, alien guide
As a highly experienced publicist, I am quite familiar with the tricks of the trade. One reason people bring us in is for the reputation renovation. When a notable gets caught with their pants down, often quite literally, then need damage control. One recent masterful example of this op is the case of Sean Penn.
Penn was a respected actor back in the 90s. Before that he was a “Hollywood bad boy” who was married briefly to bad girl pop star, Madonna. During their days of wedded bliss, there was a story that Penn had tied up Madonna in a prolonged domestic incident. The various allegations included him hitting her a bat, her going to the hospital, him getting arrested and them consequently divorcing. Despite these shocking domestic violence allegations decades ago, Penn continued to be a movie star. No flies on him.
Cut to 2015. Lee Daniels, the creator of the TV show Empire, claimed there was a double standard in how noted actor Terrence Howard was being treated for his domestic violence allegations when lighter skinned stars like Sean Penn got a pass. So what did Sean Penn do about this off handed remark? He sued Daniels for 10 million dollars.
Madonna, bless her heart, submitted a notarized statement totally defending her ex, saying Penn was always the sweetest cream puff who would never hurt a fly. Lee Daniels apologized. All was good.
So as a PsyOp perpetrator myself, excuse me, I mean publicisist, I find this story quite interesting. Allow me to break it down for you by asking some obvious questions.
Why did Madonna wait 30 years to clear Penn’s name? I guess she was pretty busy for some of it.
Why did Penn sue for $10 million specifically? Sure, it’s a nice, big intimidating number but could he really prove that much in damages at that point of his flabby career? The price tag was probably set so ridiculous high to scare anyone off every mentioning Sean Penn and wife beating domestic violence abuser in the same sentence.
Why did Penn settle for an apology if he suffered such egregious damages? Well that’s the interesting part. This is where the damage control PsyOp comes in. Get ready for a Master Class.
With one well-timed lawsuit Penn has now redeemed his reputation, 30 years later, so now no one can say he ever hit Madonna. All this time everyone thought he had sent her to the hospital, and now, suddenly, it’s all gone, evaporated like Trump’s political career. The man is 60 and his acting peak is most likely behind him. Mostly these days he shows up at natural disaster areas like New Orleans and Haiti. So why clear up this decades old misunderstanding now?
While he was down there for months helping the poor, devastated people in Haiti, drawing worldwide attention to their plight and encouraging what I am sure was a significant amount of charitable donations, he participated in several photo ops with Bill Clinton. By doing so, Penn lent credibility to the work Clinton was doing, which mostly consisted of giving millions of donated monies to his political cronies with very little benefit going to the actual natural disaster victims. This is according to the very well annotated book, Clinton Cash, by Peter Schweizer which I highly recommend, particularly if you have any delusions left that the Clintons are in anyway good people.
So did Sean Penn really care that someone mentioned in passing that he had a violent history? The dude has a rap sheet. One of his arrests was for attempted murder of a photographer. Or was the lawsuit really some Podesta-esque PR bigwig doing a white wash of Penn’s violent past so that he can continue to be useful in giving Oscar level gravitas to Bill Clinton’s ongoing efforts to fleece poor, third world people? This is what the Damage Control PsyOp is all about - lying to people so they can be bilked of money.