Posted on 09/04/2005 3:34:56 PM PDT by veronica
EFFORTS by Hollywood actor Sean Penn to aid New Orleans victims stranded by Hurricane Katrina foundered badly overnight, when the boat he was piloting to launch a rescue attempt sprang a leak.
Penn had planned to rescue children waylaid by Katrina's flood waters, but apparently forgot to plug a hole in the bottom of the vessel, which began taking water within seconds of its launch.
The actor, known for his political activism, was seen wearing what appeared to be a white flak jacket and frantically bailing water out of the sinking vessel with a red plastic cup.
When the boat's motor failed to start, those aboard were forced to use paddles to propel themselves down the flooded New Orleans street.
Asked what he had hoped to achieve in the waterlogged city, the actor replied: "Whatever I can do to help."
With the boat loaded with members of Penn's entourage, including a personal photographer, one bystander taunted the actor: "How are you going to get any people in that thing?"
heh. Heh-heh. Hee-hee-hee. Hoo,hooo,hoooo. Haaa, haaaa, haaaaaaa. BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!!
Saturday, September 3, 2005
The celebrities arrive
The celebrities have begun arriving in the disaster zone.
Yesterday, I interviewed the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who had organized a seven-bus caravan to pull flood victims out of New Orleans.
This minute I’m sitting in Louisiana’s Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge and actor Sean Penn is standing about 30 feet from me. He has turned up shod in work boots.
Earler, In the French Quarter, there was Geraldo Rivera.
Rivera had heard that there were some people who needed his help in the “flooded” Crowne Plaza on Canal Street on the edge of the Quarter.
He and his cameraman commandeered a rescue squad john boat and persuaded swift water rescue workers from Lumberton to pull the boat up to the front of the hotel.
The water was barely above ankle level and the distance from dry land where they put the boat in to the hotel door was only 75 feet, but somehow they kept straight faces as they pulled Rivera, who had struck a pose vaguely reminiscent of Washington crossing the Delaware.
There were a couple of men standing behind a foot-high wall of sandbags at the hotel door. Rivera hailed them practically as soon as he was on the boat, allowing as how he had come to help them get out.
They yelled back words of rude dissent, to the effect that they were quite happy where they were.
Rivera would hear none of that.
He pushed on in to tell the folks inside that he’d be back with buses.
Photographer Chuck Liddy and I walked away. We turned the corner, walked around behind the hotel, and realized that there was dry land on three sides of it.
http://blogs.newsobserver.com/katrina/index.php
ROFL!
Off Topic: (I just found it interesting while Googling for Sean Penn)
September 04, 2005
Galloway and Fonda forge a fighting pact
Sarah Baxter
THE controversial MP George Galloway, who is to tour America this month accompanied by Jane Fonda, the Hollywood star, will be sharpening his critique of the Iraq war in the light of President George W Bush’s difficulties in coping with the effects of hurricane Katrina.
As Denise Bollinger, a tourist stranded in New Orleans said, “It’s downtown Baghdad.”
The anti-war left has been quick to suggest that American troops, including members of the Louisiana National Guard — many of whom are deployed in Iraq — would prefer to be helping their own citizens rather than facing Islamic insurgents.
Fonda, a veteran anti-war protester who earned the name Hanoi Jane during the Vietnam war, is to speak alongside Galloway at two meetings in Madison, Wisconsin, and Chicago, Illinois.
She was persuaded to join the MP’s travelling show by her friend, Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, after Fonda was impressed by Galloway’s pugnacious performance last spring in front of a senate committee investigating the United Nations oil-for-food scandal.
The star abandoned plans for her own anti-war roadshow and threw in her lot with Galloway after Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved mother of a soldier who spent August camped outside Bush’s holiday home in Texas, decided to mount another touring protest.
Winning Fonda’s support is a coup that will raise the MP’s profile in America. Organisers of his tour are hoping that Sean Penn, another leading Hollywood anti-war protester, will join Galloway on stage in Los Angeles.
Galloway said he was delighted by Fonda’s backing: “She’s a big star with a luminous reputation as an anti-war figure.”
The tour, which kicks off in Boston on September 13 and ends in Washington on September 24, is billed as Mr Galloway Goes to Washington, after the classic James Stewart film about honest, homespun “Mr Smith’s” efforts to clean up America’s politics. Galloway is also publishing a book of the same name.
Chris Dols, an organiser of the US tour, said: “Jane Fonda and George Galloway will point out how much money is being wasted on the war when it is needed to help people at home. We can’t take care of our poor black people in the United States, yet the military is spending billions on the war in Iraq.”
The 51-year-old MP for Bethnal Green and Bow said he was a fan of Fonda’s movies and was old enough to remember her in Barefoot in the Park, with Robert Redford.
The film star has rediscovered her inner radicalism, which lay dormant for a while. Fonda, 67, began speaking out against the Iraq war last spring during the promotion of her autobiography, My Life So Far.
She condemned the “lies” that led America into the Iraq war. “I’ve decided I’m coming out,” she said.
The MP’s critics question whether Fonda is fully aware of Galloway’s controversial background. The senate committee investigating the UN oil-for-food scandal controversially claimed that Saddam Hussein had granted him vouchers for 20m barrels of oil in 2000-03. but produced no evidence to support the allegation.
The MP retorted that the accusations were the “mother of all smokescreens” to divert attention from the “crimes” of the Iraq war.
snip
snip
clearly out of his element
any peckerwood ought to know there is a plug in the ass end of an Ouachita style john boat
maybe he shoulda tried poling a pirogue.....and talked coonass ...for authenticity
Spicoli was attempting a "Manifestly unsafe voyage".
In the meantime Geraldo actually went on a rescue today.
hahaha Geraldo is a bigger fraud.
This guy lives for publicity.
In English, the name "Rivera" roughly translates to "Pulitzer"...
Great!!
I'm not sure that the photographer was there to film the people....I think it had more to do with photographing Sean rescueing people. ugh.
He brought a possee.
I'm sure it seemed like a really good idea at the time. I wonder how bad the hangover is?
Maybe his "posse" should have known a little more about boat motors...
Thanks, I needed this.
Is this for real or a joke??
Has anyone found pictures or a video of Sean Penn's boat?
ROTFLMBO!!!
Forgot the boat plug. Hell, he tried I guess. But did he really need an entourage? How many was he planning on having in the boat?
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