Fuck him.
All these white folk who presume to know who is and is not qualified to run Haiti ought to be making statements like" We pledge to work with whomever the Haitian people decide to represent them. Period. Who they think should run Haiti or any other country amounts to so much dirt on an ant hill. But this isn't about Penn. This is about Kristof of the NY Times. The NYTpicker website discusses an episode of honesty that Kristof had:
"Very often I do go to developing countries where local people are doing extraordinary work," Kristof conceded Friday in a video posted on his blog, "and instead I tend to focus on some foreigner, often some American, who’s doing something there."
See this is how historical whitewash happens. This is how white people get the sense that Africans and other people suffering from the fallout of those weapon of mass destruction called Colonialism, Imperialism, International Monetary Funds, fake Socialism, true Capitalism, etc., have not the intellect to help themselves and therefore are in need to them to parachute in and save them.
Careers are made. Foundations are made in the names of the most popular. They are called on as experts in such and such exotic locations. And most insultingly, they get to look down their noses at African-Americans as they tell them about how lucky they are to be here and they are just being too lazy to take advantage.
Hence the reason, by and large I ignore Kristof. I know there are plenty of black folk helping black folk in Africa and I'd rather read about them. That's why I have the Timbuktu Chronicles in my blogroll