Did Hollywood star Sean Penn meet with IS 'caliph'?

Blog: Satire and reality have converged to such an extent that few can tell the difference.

2 min read

Karim Traboulsi

11 Jan, 2016

How many degrees of separation are there between Baghdadi (L) and Sean Penn? [Anadolu/Getty]

Renowned American actor Sean Penn was very close to meeting self-proclaimed caliph and leader of the world's most notorious terror organisation, the Islamic State group, but the meeting was cancelled at the last minute.

Or so claimed a satirical blog post, the Borowitz Report, on the New Yorker website.

Borowitz was mocking the widely publicised meeting between Sean Penn and Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, which has brought scorn upon the Milk star from the White House and US politicians.

Penn's interview with El Chapo was conducted in October in the Mexican jungle after Guzman's jail break, and published by Rolling Stone.

But US news outlet Deadline fell for Borowitz's clever satire and ran it as a real news story - before later retracting it.

Guzman, 58, was recaptured on Friday after months on the run.

Twitter Post

However, as the BBC reported, Mexican officials say Penn's secret meeting helped lead them to the boss of the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel.

Perhaps this is what prompted Borowitz's Baghdadi to cancel the meeting with Sean Penn...

The ISIS spokesman said that al-Baghdadi hoped that Penn would harbor 'no hard feelings' toward him, and emphasised that he remained an 'enormous fan' of the actor. 'Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi loves all of Sean's films, even that one he did with Madonna,' the spokesman said
[The Borowitz Report]

Dead man walking

In satirical film Team America: World Police, the pseudo-activism of Hollywood stars such as Penn is mercilessly mocked. A fictionalised puppet version of Penn visits North Korea to broker peace with the late dictator Kim Jong-il.

Sean Penn was so offended by his puppet's depiction as the head of the fictitious Film Actors' Guild (FAG) that he sent the filmmakers an angry letter laden with an expletive or two.

But basketball star Dennis Rodman really did go to North Korea. And in a mixed-up world such as ours, in which Tony Blair was appointed a peace envoy, and in which Egyptian generals claim to cure AIDS using kebab skewers, it comes as little surprise that fewer of us can tell fact from fiction.