Sean Penn defends his Oscars 'green card' joke by mocking the social-media 'idiocracy'

Sean Penn defends his Oscars &quot;green card&quot; joke

(Image credit: Conan)

published 19 March 2015

Conan O'Brien thought Sean Penn's joke when presenting Alejandro Iñárritu with his Best Picture Oscar — "Who gave this son of a bitch his green card?" — was hilarious. But not everybody agrees with him. So on Wednesday night's Conan, he asked Penn what he thought of the blowback. "Well, they could be a bit more cheerful," Penn said of his critics. And then, after the laughter, he dropped the diplomatic pretenses.

"Within that part of our society that is an idiocracy," Penn began, people "do recognize the latch-on subject matter. 'Oooh, he said this, and I can put that in a category where if I criticize it, I'll have a lot of friends on Twitter' — for a minute. And so they did, and it gave them something to do." Are you going to take that, Twitter? (Penn isn't on Twitter, so you'll have to "latch on" on a different medium.) —Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.