On the Advocate.com, James Kirchick sees major contradictions in the praise Sean Penn is getting for playing Harvey Milk and the actor's recent interviews in the Nation with Cuban leader Raul Castro and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.

In the piece, "A Friend to Gays and Antigay Dictators Alike," Kirchick, an assistant editor at the new Republic, writes of Penn's dinner with Castro, "It’s only in the closing moments of his otherwise adulatory, seven-hour interview that Penn bothers to ask about human rights abuses on the island, and just the “allegations” of abuses at that. The lack of interest in individual liberty, hardly surprising for a far-left fellow traveler like Penn, is nonetheless ironic given the Cuban regime’s treatment of gay people, a subject that one suspects Penn might have some interest in given his critically acclaimed performance in Milk. Not long after the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro ordered the internment of gay people in prison labor camps, where they were murdered or worked to death for their “counterrevolutionary tendencies.”

"Over the gate of one of these camps were the words “Work Will Make Men Out of You,” an eerie homage to the welcome sign at Auschwitz instructing Jews on their way to the gas chambers that “Work Will Make You Free.” (The plight of gays in the Cuban revolution is movingly told in the novel "Before Night Falls" by Reinaldo Arenas, made into a film starring Javier Bardem. Playing a gay character in a film that has both an antitotalitarian and pro-gay message, Bardem is an “ally” less morally compromised than Penn.) In the early years of the regime, Raul Castro was notorious for ordering the summary execution of its opponents, including people whose only crime was their homosexuality. This is the man with whom Penn was “in stitches” knocking back glasses of red wine."

As Kirchick points out, you only need to watch the movie "Before Night Falls," starring Javier Bardem, to see the treatment of gays in the early years of the Castro regime.

He's just as critical of Penn's meeting with Chavez, who is accused of an array of human rights abuses by the state department.

I doubt that this throws a wrench into Penn's Oscar hopes, but Kirchick is the first to connect the actor's performance with foreign policy. Penn can argue that he merely went to both countries and met with their leaders as a journalist, albeit he held back of just didn't get to some questions.

Penn writes in his piece, "The hour was getting late, but I didn't want to leave without asking Castro about allegations of human rights violations and alleged narco-trafficking facilitated by the Cuban government. A 2007 report by Human Rights Watch states that Cuba "remains the one country in Latin America that represses nearly all forms of political dissent." Furthermore, there are about 200 political prisoners in Cuba today, approximately 4 percent of whom are convicted of crimes of nonviolent dissent. As I await Castro's comments, I can't help but think of the nearby US prison at Guantánamo and the horrendous US offenses against human rights there.

""No country is 100 percent free of human rights abuses," Castro tells me. But, he insists, "reports in the US media are highly exaggerated and hypocritical." Indeed, even high-profile Cuban dissidents, such as Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, acknowledge the manipulations, accusing the US Interests Section of gaining dissident testimony through cash payoffs. Ironically, in 1992 and '94, Human Rights Watch also described lawlessness and intimidation by anti-Castro groups in Miami as what author/journalist Reese Erlich termed "violations normally associated with Latin American dictatorships."

"Having said that, I'm a proud American and infinitely aware that if I were a Cuban citizen and were to write an article such as this about the Cuban leadership, I could be jailed. Furthermore, I'm proud that the system set up by our founding fathers, while not exactly intact today, was never dependent on just one great leader per epoch. These things remain in question for the romantic heroes of Cuba and Venezuela. I consider mentioning this, and perhaps should have, but I've got something else on my mind."

Updated

That, and other news, in today's Roundup and Recap.

"Saturday Night Live" stirred the ire of New York Gov. David Paterson, and probably for good reason. Their "Weekend Update" skit was rather juvenile. Riffs on the governor's lack of vision --- jokes performed countless times on variety shows of old --- have drawn protests from groups representing persons with disabilities. In fact, Paterson's denunciation of the skit surely was a rare airing of a public gripe that many a politician in the 2008 cycle wished to express in private. While the audience laughed out loud and there were plenty of private, guilty chuckles to go around, my troubles with it are for other reasons. The skit was yet another example of the "SNL" tendency to pad out its sketches, i.e. not know when they have gone on too long.

Jeffrey Katzenberg tells the D.C. Examiner's Yeas & Nays that Barack Obama won't have the same cozy relationship with Hollywood that Bill Clinton had. “I think he appreciates Hollywood, but he’s not enamored with it. I don’t think it’s like the Clinton years. He’s a very different man.”

“I don’t think he’s one scintilla starstruck,” Katzenberg said. “I think we’re all starstruck by him.”

He plans to attend the inauguration next month.

Pat Boone defends a comparison of Prop 8 protesters to terrorists in Mumbai and says that he loves gays.

Caroline Kennedy will pursue Hillary Clinton's Senate seat.

Il Divo will perform at the Inaugural Purple Ball at the Fairmont Hotel in Washington on Jan. 20. The ball will benefit the Eracism Foundation, founded by Lou Gossett Jr.

Barack Obama and Joseph Biden plan to arrive in D.C. for the inauguration by train.

And while the tone of the inauguration may be more sedate than usual, given the tough economic times, but there's precedent for partying even in the depths of the Depression.

From the L.A. Times, on the 1933 inaugural: "Warner Bros. sent a train load of Hollywood stars, including Busby Berkeley chorus girls who rode a float in the inaugural parade, led by cowboy star Tom Mix doing rope tricks on his horse, said Stephen Talbot, whose father, actor Lyle Talbot, made the trip.

""The very next day," he said, "the actors all hustled over to a big movie palace in Washington -- the Earle Theatre -- to perform a live stage show before the screening of the big new Warner Bros. musical '42nd Street,' whose theme was that even in the depths of the Depression, the show must go on!""

That, and other news, in today's Roundup and Recap.

Barack Obama's inaugural committee has set up a tool to make it easier to search for donors and bundlers "real time." The money will pay for the costs of inaugural balls and other events, and many of those who contribute are getting VIP access to various shindigs, although the tickets to the actual swearing in ceremony cannot be sold.

Among those who have chipped in for packages up to $50,000 so far: Skip Brittenham, Marcy Carsey, Jamie Lee Curtis, David Fisher, Jamie Foxx, Lisa Henson, Samuel L. Jackson, John Keane, Katherine Kendrick, James Lassiter, George Soros, Sharon Stone, Halle Berry and Robert Zemeckis. Among those who are bundling contributions (i.e. rounding up their friends and contacts) are Nicole Avant, Elizabeth Bagley, Marcy and Leo Carsey, Mark Gorenberg, Bren Simon, Andy Spahn, Terry and Bonnie Turner and Wendy Wanderman.

Al Gore plans an environmentally themed inaugural ball at the National Portrait Gallery.

Al Franken gets some good news in his battle to win the Minnesota recount.

Steven Soderbergh, promoting his new movie "Che," says the U.S. should lift the embargo on Cuba.

John McCain would rather not talk about his VP pick.

When I first heard yesterday that Jerry Lewis would be getting the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the coming Academy Awards, my first reaction was laughter.

It wasn't because Lewis is a comic, but that he is a comic with insane sensibilities, as likely to stage a pratfall as he is to outrageous pronouncements. What immediately came to mind was a flap last month in which he used an anti-gay slur in a television interview, then apologized. He did the same thing last year during the telethon, and also issued an apology.

Then my thoughts immediately turned to the environment in Hollywood following the passage of Prop 8, where donor rolls are being scrutinized and those who contributed to the effort to ban same-sex marriage have been targeted with threats of boycott. Already, those efforts have extended to the Sundance Film Festival, which has been screening films at a multiplex at a theater chain whose own contributed to Prop 8.

Adding insult to injury was today's near snubbing of "Milk" by the Golden Globes.

So could the Academy Awards be next? As a fellow editor here quips, imagine it: An Oscar ceremony without a gay audience. Who's left?

The selection of recipients of honorary awards usually doesn't reach the level of vetting of an Obama cabinet pick, but some legendary figures have been denied accolades for making controversial comments. A veteran TV star, for instance, was denied entrance into the TV Academy's Hall of Fame because of a history of racial slurs.

The Motion Picture Academy surely focused on Lewis' volume of good deeds with the MDA telethon, and it's a wonder on that level why he was not given this award many years ago. But the post-Prop 8 environment is different. Anger is still out there, and sensitivities are high. There already are reports of calls coming in to the Academy, but it remains to be seen whether this would really rise to the level of, say, the protest over an honorary award to Elia Kazan over his past testimony during the Hollywood blacklist. It's hard to see it. I called the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and save for mine, they had yet to receive any press inquiries.

Perhaps it will be a question of relevance, as Lewis is not exactly on a career trajectory, and he will merely be seen for who he is: A tempermental comic, prone to the occasional moments of insanity.

Updated

That, and other news, in today's Political Panorama.

Ron Howard's "Frost/Nixon" captured five nominations at this morning's announcement of the Golden Globe nods, but Gus Van Sant's "Milk," the season's other major political film, was all but shut out, capturing just a single nomination for star Sean Penn.

"Frost/Nixon" scored nominations for best motion picture/drama, actor Frank Langella, screenwriter Peter Morgan, director Ron Howard and for the Hans Zimmer score.

It's likely the "Milk" snub will be the source of much consternation this award season, particularly in light of the protests over Proposition 8 and the similarities to the era depicted in the film. It also won the New York Film Critics award for best picture on Wednesday. Gay blogger Andy Towle headlines his piece on the Globe announcements, "Day Without a Gay as 'Milk' is Snubbed at Golden Globes." Greg Hernandez of Out In Hollywood writes, "Oh well. There's always the Oscars."

He may be right. The Globes in 2006 didn't nominate "Crash," and the movie went on to win best picture. It was the big upset over the favorite, "Brokeback Mountain."

Stewart Thanks: Rick Jacobs' Courage Campaign lauched a drive to thank Jon Stewart for challenging Mike Huckabee on gay marriage.

Stone Face: Oliver Stone has selected his next project: A documentary about Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. Chavez has tried to foster relationships with filmmakers via a government film fund, but his regime has faced opposition from the Bush administration and from emigres for populist socialism and curbs on press freedom.

Che Play: Reason.tv posts a new video tied to the release of Steven Soderbergh's "Che." Nick Gillespie asks why "celebs are celebrating a communist killer."

No MLK Auction: Harry Belafonte has withdrawn Martin Luther King Jr. documents from a Sotheby's auction after objections from King's estate.

Vanity Fair: Artists redesign Obama's Oval Office.

Franken's Pitch: Al Franken makes a YouTube appeal for rejected absentee ballots.

Newspapers are struggling, shedding jobs and racing to come up with cash, but they are still the primary source of original enterprise reporting and investigative pieces. In fact, the arrest of Illinois' governor was yet another reminder of the value of the print media. Plus: Tina Brown's The Daily Beast makes a mark.

Join myself, Teresa Valdez Klein and Meagan Carberry as we talk about media in disarray on the next edition of Wilshire & Washington On the Radio. You can listen to it here.

David Mamet writes in the Huffington Post on Gov. Rod Blagojevich:

"I am from Chicago, and, so, having been disillusioned with politics at an early age I do not become involved. The only reason I vote is because they pay me."

Rachel Maddow stages a re-enactment of Illinois Gov. Blagojevich's greatest hits.

The Creative Coalition has just added Sting to its list of musicians performing at its inaugural ball.

He'll perform with rock and roll legend Sam Moore, and joins an event headlined by Elvis Costello.

Among those expected at the event are Anne Hathaway, Ron Howard, Spike Lee and Ashley Judd.

As expected, the Obama inaugural committee is tempering Washington celebrations with gestures acknowledging the troubled economy.

There still will be parties and balls, but one of the days will be devoted to public service. On Martin Luther King Day on Jan. 19, "the President-elect and Vice President-elect and their families, like Americans in communities all across the country, will participate in activities dedicated to serving others in communities across the Washington, D.C. area."

The theme of the inauguration will be "Renewing America's Promise." Yet to be announced are the lineup of official inaugural balls.

Obama's team, meanwhile, are offering an "Obama Four-Year Calendar" for $35 that will raise money for the DNC.