Infidel Babe of the Week

Maria Conchita Alonso 

Tells Sean Penn 

"Shut Up About Chavez The Killer"

First off, she's my kind of woman. I love voluptuous, raven-haired, dark-eyed beauties like her.

And, I friggin' hate Sean Penn. I haven't been to a movie of his in 20 years.

So, Alonso is doubly-qualified as Infidel Babe of the Week 

From the Independent:

The saccharine conventions of showbusiness were thrown out of the window last week, when the Hollywood actress Maria Conchita Alonso was collared by paparazzi and asked if she was pleased about her former co-star Sean Penn's recent Oscar victory.

"He's an amazing actor. I can't take that away from him," she said of Penn, who worked with her on the 1988 cop film Colors. "It's just that he has no clue at all what's going on in Venezuela. He's been praising Hugo Chavez, who is a dictator and a killer. He should shut up about what he doesn't know." Alonso, who was raised in Venezuela, was apparently upset by a glowing article that Penn had written for The Nation magazine about her homeland's charismatic but increasingly dictatorial left-wing President.

In normal circumstances, Alonso's interview might have been brushed under the carpet. But for the first time a Hollywood insider was saying what much of America thinks: left-wing luvvies in the movie business should wake up to the real nature of their hero. For one thing, Mr Chavez throughout his career has criticised Hollywood as a medium of American "cultural imperialism". And Penn, who since his Oscar-winning performance in Milk has become a vociferous gay rights activist, is also open to allegations of hypocrisy. The Venezuelan leader's political hero, Fidel Castro, imprisoned and executed gay men, and once declared: "In this country [Cuba] there are no homosexuals."

Penn has plenty of company. On Thursday, Benicio del Toro made headlines when he took tea with Mr Chavez at his palace in Caracas. The actor, in Venezuela to promote Steven Soderbergh's film Che, told journalists that his host was "nice" and that he'd "had a good time". Del Toro's comments caused apoplexy on the political right in the US, but lately even Democrats have been perturbed by Mr Chavez's intolerance of media criticism and political opposition.

Last month, through a referendum, Mr Chavez managed to alter the constitution to allow him to run for as many terms of office as he likes, and last week he caused further ructions by nationalising a rice mill owned by the US agricultural giant Cargill. He has frequently threatened to halt all oil exports to the US, and to seize the assets of American petroleum firms with operations in Venezuela.

Other Hollywood liberals face public criticism, most notably Oliver Stone, currently filming an adulatory authorised biopic of Mr Chavez. Stone could be joined in the pillory by Danny Glover, who was given $18m by Mr Chavez in 2006 to make a left-leaning film about Haiti's 19th-century leader, Toussaint Louverture. Harry Belafonte sparked outrage two years ago when he appeared on a platform with Mr Chavez to call George Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world".