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Not just sexy Kim Jong-un: 5 times the Onion has fooled foreign media

Denmark's TV 2: Sean Penn's outrage over not getting seanpenn@gmail.com

Actor Sean Penn has a reputation for occasional angry, grandiose outbursts. That is, of course, the joke behind a 2006 Onion article, wherein Mr. Penn demands to know who took the "seanpenn@gmail.com" email address before he could.

The Onion purported that Penn, in a sometimes salty 1,900-word open letter published in The Washington Post, asked whoever had the Gmail address at issue to "come forward immediately, rather than wallowing in the shame and ignominy of fraud."

"Sir or madam, if only you could have seen the anger and revulsion that washed over my face as I found that SeanPenn@gmail.com, Penn@gmail.com, SPenn@gmail.com, Penn.Sean@gmail.com, and SeanPennRules@gmail.com had all been taken," Penn's letter read. "If only you could have felt my heart leap to my throat upon realizing that Seanpenn@gmail.com would not work either, as Gmail addresses are not case-senstitive. If only you could have heard my cry of anguish when, in a last, desperate move, I typed in Spicoli@gmail.com, only to be rejected once more and finally forced to accept the abomination that is Sean.Penn20061@gmail.com."

Denmark's TV 2 took the story to be true, and printed an article in Danish on the subject, complete with a poll asking whether Penn was right to be angry. (The article has since been removed, but can still be seen on the Internet Archive.)

To be fair to TV 2, they did list the story under their gossip section.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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