Sean Penn was on Larry King Live on CNN last night to talk about his objections to singer Wyclef Jean’s announced run for President of Haiti. Haiti is in desperate straits following the massive earthquake earlier this year. Penn has been working in Haiti in a refugee camp since the earthquake, and has been sanctimoniously talking about it to media outlets complaining that other people aren’t doing enough and don’t have the right attitude about it like he does. As Kaiser wrote in our earlier coverage, we are impressed at Sean’s charity work and commitment. He’s been down in the trenches for a long time and he really walks the walk. He doesn’t see that his way is not the only way, though, and seems to have an inflated sense of his own ability and self importance – not that it takes away from the good work he’s doing. He’s Sean Penn and he’s necessarily talking smack. He may be a great humanitarian but he’s still a jerk in his way.

Getting back to the latest issue, Penn thinks that Jean may be running due to corporate interests, but at first he kind of skirts around the point and tries to present it in a softer way. Penn brings up some important points considering that Jean is accused of mishandling funds through his charity, Yele Haiti. Penn also makes it clear that Jean rolls with a huge entourage and hasn’t done much on the ground in Haiti – unlike himself, of course:

BLITZER: You’re absolutely right. It is heartbreaking to think about it. They make the pledges and then they don’t write the checks. Sean, what’s your reaction to Wyclef Jean deciding he wants to run for the presidency?

SEAN PENN, ACTOR AND ACTIVIST: Well, I’ll tell you when I was asked to be on the show today, I had thought I would reserve judgment. But after paying attention to the things that were said, I feel that it’s important to say that while President Preval himself has made very clear the value of Wyclef’s voice as a song writer, as someone with whom the youth is quite enamored with, and appointing him, not as he said electing him, ambassador at large, which took place, in fact, three years ago, which does not qualify him as someone who has had residency for the five consecutive years necessary — but that’s an issue of rule of law that we will or won’t respect in our donations, or lack thereof, to campaigns abroad.

We are talking on CNN, which has primarily an audience outside of Haiti. And so I think what’s really important is that the last thing in the world Haiti needs — and I’m not accusing Wyclef Jean of being on opportunist. I don’t know the man. But I think it’s extremely important that we pay great attention to both the individuals in the United States who are enamored with him, maybe not for his political strengths, and in particular for corporate interests that are enamored with him, and those that may themselves be opportunists on the back of the Haitian people.

Right now, I worry that this is a campaign that is more about a vision of flying around the world, talking to people, as he said. It’s certainly not one of the youth drafting him. I would be quite sure that this was an influence of corporations here in the United States and private individuals that may well have capitalized on his will to see himself flying around the world doing that. What the Haitian people need now is a leader who is genuinely willing to sacrifice.

And one of the reasons I don’t know very much about Wyclef Jean is I haven’t seen or heard anything of him in these last six months that I’ve been in Haiti. I think he’s an important voice. I hope he doesn’t sacrifice that voice by taking the eye off the very devastating realities on the ground and the very difficult strategic future that it’s got in putting itself back together…

BLITZER: Anderson, stand by for a moment. I want to bring back Sean Penn. because you raised some serious questions about the motives behind Wyclef Jean’s decision to run for president of Haiti. I want you to be more specific if you can, Sean. This notion that there are some corporate interests here in the United States who may be pushing him to do this. What do you mean by that?

PENN: Well, the people that I’ve spoken to related to his campaign and those on the ground in Haiti claim these things, and so really I’m putting this forward to a very important oversight committee, and that’s the media. You know, I watched Rick Sanchez prior to this program talking about himself and his frolic of baseball as a child for a long time. In the meantime, on my Blackberry, a woman of 24 years old is dying because she didn’t have attention to a tooth for the last two months in Haiti.

I see in Wyclef Jean somebody who could well have been influenced by the promise of support from companies. I think that Haiti is clearly vulnerable to, in particular, the manufacturing concerns that it so desperately needs and the jobs that it so desperately needs. But with a history of American interests coming in and underpaying people. This is a culture of one to two dollars a day that they were making. And we really can’t — if we help with them in fixing this house — if it had a leak before the earthquake, it doesn’t make much sense to rebuild it with a leak again.

So what I’m encouraging is that we look very hard at all the donors, because this is somebody who is going to receive an enormous amount of his support, if he continues his campaign, from the United States. And I’m very — I have to say, I’m very suspicious of it simply because he, as an ambassador at large, has been virtually silent. For those of us in Haiti, he has been a non-presence.

He said earlier he was helping to move bodies and so on in the first days. That may well have been. And everybody’s help was very needed. But his voice has really been most loudly that which allegedly has taken over 400,000 dollars of money that was designated for Haitian relief for himself. He claims he didn’t do it. I think that is going to have to be looked into it.

In the meantime, I’ve been there where I know what 400,000 dollars could do for these people’s lives, and for a 24-year-old girl right now who is dying. So this — I want to see someone who is really, really willing to sacrifice for their country, and not just someone who I personally saw with a vulgar entourage of vehicles that demonstrated a wealth in Haiti that, in context, I felt was a very obscene demonstration.

[From Transcripts.CNN.com]

I see what Sean Penn is saying, but it comes from a place of “everyone should do as I do and say” and it’s hard to swallow it from that perspective. Jean talked to the Associated Press about Penn’s criticism, and said that he was committed to Haiti because he was born there, and added that he would welcome the chance to meet him. “I just want Sean Penn to fully understand I am a Haitian, born in Haiti and I’ve been coming to my country ever since (I was) a child. He might just want to pick up the phone and meet, so he fully understands the man.” I don’t know if Jean fully grasps what he’s getting himself into if he becomes President of Haiti, but I doubt that Penn realizes the extent of it either. At least Penn is willing to help, and he’ll tell you all about it.