Celebrities are increasingly wielding their fame to influence politics.

Wyclef Jean, an internationally known hip-hop
artist and sometime partner of Shakira, is now also the front-runner in
Haiti’s upcoming presidential election.

Born in Haiti and raised in Brooklyn, the former
Fugees frontman has risen to become one of the most famous names in his
native country and has put forth a detailed plan to rebuild the Haitian
economy.

Surprisingly, Jean is getting a bit of criticism
from, of all places, Hollywood. It arrived courtesy of Sean Penn – the
same Penn who typically has words of praise for Venezuelan despot Hugo
Chavez.

Penn accused Jean of not spending enough time in
Haiti after the earthquake and of misappropriating hundreds of thousands
of dollars from Jean’s charity, Yele Haiti.

Speaking on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” Penn said he
suspects that Jean may be backed by corporate interests and
opportunists who want to take advantage of his celebrity. The actor
acknowledged he does not know Jean.

“What the Haitian people need now is a leader who
is genuinely willing to sacrifice,” Penn said. “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.”

Penn recommended that Jean’s donors receive very
close scrutiny, because “this is somebody who is going to receive an
enormous amount of his support, if he continues his campaign, from the
United States.”

Penn also noted that the country has 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.”

Appearing on CBS’ “The Early Show,” Jean defended
himself, saying, “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.”

The singer added, “He might just want to pick up the phone and meet, so he fully understands the man.”

“I have to take what I used to sing about – poverty, hunger, AIDS – and turn it into policy,” Jean said.

Penn didn’t say anything about an item that
appeared on the Smoking Gun website. According to documents posted on
the site, Jean owes more than $2.1 million in back taxes for 2006, 2007,
and 2008. Sounds like a perfect nominee for an Obama Cabinet post.

Hip-hop stars are apparently paid extremely well.

To his credit, Jean promises to pay back the money he owes and put an accounting of his finances online.

Now that’s way over the line.

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