Celebrity Endorsement Watch
Penn lending Kucinich some star power. (Reuters).
If you're keeping track at home, or in the pages of US Weekly:
Oprah Winfrey's spending the weekend with Barack Obama.
After keeping her options open by donating to several Democrats, Barbra Streisand formally endorsed Hillary Clinton. (Previous musical support for the Democratic front-runner included rapper 50 cent, who told Time magazine "I like Hillary."
Not to be outdone by high-wattage friends of his front-running opponents, Dennis Kucinich has the support of none other than Sean Penn.
At an event in San Francisco today, the Academy Award winner was scheduled to give what was billed as "a blistering indictment of political leaders and an impassioned endorsement of Presidential proportions."
The "blistering" script the actor chose was not vetted by the Kucinich campaign, whose spokesman stressed, in a statement, that "Sean Penn is a good friend, but he's also a very intense, independent-minded person. He's going to say whatever he's going to say."
Penn's progressive politics are pretty well documented--most of all by the actor himself, who has written dispatches from travels to both Iraq and Iran for the San Francisco Chronicle.
The other side of the race is not without its boldface moments.
This week, Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling worked the crowd with John McCain in New Hampshire.
And, of course, there's Mike Huckabee, whose recent surge in Iowa polls did roughly coincide with the celebrity endorsement he revealed last month: the backing of Chuck Norris.
--Rachel Dry
Posted at 8:20 PM ET on Dec 7, 2007
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Sean Penn at Cannes Film Festival, 2000.

Academy Award winning actor and political activist Sean Penn has just thrown his support in the 2008 US Presidential election behind 
Dennis Kucinich.

In a San Francisco speech described by his PR people as "a blistering indictment of political leaders and an impassioned endorsement of Presidential proportions," Penn threw his support behind the lesser known Democratic candidate.

The Kucinich campaign did not vet the speech.



Other recent celebrity endorsements in the race include Oprah Winfrey for Barack Obama, Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling for John McCain, Harry Belafonte endorsed John Edwards, and both 50 Cent and Barbra Streisand behind Hillary Clinton. Chuck Norris has backed Mike Huckabee in a high profile, comedic endorsement ad.

Penn first became politically active in October 2002, when he spent $56,000 on a full-page ad in the ''Washington Post'', asking President George W. Bush to end "a cycle of violence". He visited Iraq briefly in December of that year, Iran in 2005 as a journalist, and met with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez for two hours in 2007.

Penn went to New Orleans to "aid rescue workers" after Hurricane Katrina; many questioned how much of a liability an untrained worker, especially when his boat sprang a leak, would be. One website commented "just showed up with his entourage and a personal photographer with the apparent intent of just wandering around looking for a good photo op."