I'm not so close minded that I don't have liberal friends, in fact, disagreements aside, I can appreciate a healthy arguement or discussion from an opposing view.
All I'm saying, and that's all I'm saying, is that the guy seems like someone a regular joe can speak to without the conversation instantly devolving into some canned lefty elevator speech. I could easily be wrong, just my impression.
I went to school with Sean Penn and graduated with him (Santa Monica H.S., Class of '78). In many ways, he was very much like the Jeff Spicoli character, albeit with an inner core of bile and meanness that the goofy stoner-surfer lacked. Even when he was a teenager, Sean was a self-righteous, spotlight-hogging, short-tempered, egomaniacal bully. Nothing he has done in the last 29 years from his legal scrapes, to his violent antics, to his absurd political posturing, has suprised me one bit.
I saw him up close very early in the game, and knew that he was headed for both public prominence and notoriety. Being a celebrity and a blowhard, he's a sucker for causes like this, where he can have his ego stroked by political groupies, and cloak his own hatefulness in righteous rhetoric.
A talented actor, but IMHO, a pathologically angry human being.