Kumar goes to..the White House?

A very underrated story that I first saw last Tuesday in the Herald, was that Kal Penn – aka Kumar from the unreal Harold and Kumar movies – is quitting acting to take up a post in the Obama administration.

And just like that, Kumar is going from White Castle to the White House. That's right, your favorite stoner is now the new associate director of the White House Office of Public Liaison.

OK, Penn doesn’t actually smoke, as disheartened potheads everywhere found out in interviews leading up to his last movie, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, but it’s still funny that he’s going to be in the White House.

It really just cements one thing: Kal Penn can do whatever he wants. Known has Kumar to everyone who has seen a movie, he avoided the typecasting that has dogged other stoner-players like Jim Brewer and successfully appeared in a series of hit shows, including a brief stint on Law & Order, a 4-episode tilt as a terrorist on 24 and most recently a 3-season run on House.

That’s why the story first broke Tuesday; Penn’s character in House was killed off the night before on the season’s biggest episode, something the show’s staff kept hush-hush for months. (No spoiler alert, it’s been a week, get on your DVR already).

And while I can’t find that article I read in the Herald, there is a good one I found in Friday’s LA Times.

I guess Kumar not only donated money to Obama’s campaign after he met the Prez-to-be, he also hit the campaign trail hard trying to get young voters. Some of the duties of his new job include “focusing on outreach to young people, arts professionals and the Asian American community.”

He studied international security at Stanford so no matter what Kums does, he’s most likely gonna kill it.

--Nick