ubernoir wrote:

I thought I’d begin 2009 with a movie, so on its first freezing afternoon I went to see Gus Van Sant’s “Milk,” starring Sean Penn in a breathtaking performance as a smart, wry gay-rights politician whose whimsical effectiveness arouses murderous ire.
...
Was this really the same Sean Penn who’d just penned a fawning tribute to the grim Cuban president, Raúl Castro, a dictator presiding over a 50-year-old revolution that once dispatched gays to labor camps to correct their “counterrevolutionary tendencies?”

Yes, it was, despite the fact that “Milk” is precisely about the sort of grass-roots political movement that would be impossible in the Cuba of the Castro brothers, despite the fact that the “inalienable rights” of hundreds of Cuban political prisoners are trampled daily and despite the fact that the pursuit of happiness for most Cubans has been reduced to eking out an existence on $20 a month.
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A gift for detachment is as important to the journalist as a gift for empathy is to the actor.

art and politics rarely if ever mix well
I tried to think of a single instance of a great artist who was a great politician and couldn't think of a single instance. There were great artists that have used art to bring social themes and issues to public consciousness like Dickens but not an example of a practical every day political leader and who was also a great artist. Havel sprang to mind and examples of great artists with lousy political instincts like Neil Young and even malign political instincts like Wagner. So maybe art is too emotive. Any suggestions?

Robert Redford on furthering art via Sundance and using the podium gained via it to push environmental issues. There's a pretty good one, but he's not so much a "politician" as an activist. Bono has done huge amounts of work jockeying different groups to work on Africa issues to the point that his work there makes him a serious consideration for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The short version though is people who are good enough at being an artist to survive at it, keep doing that and use the position to be activists in other areas. It's the BAD artists we need to worry about. You know, like that guy who painted postcards in Vienna or that other guy in Bedtime for Bonzo.