A few years have passed since Harold and Kumar escaped from Guantanamo or killed time hanging out together smoking their beloved mary jane. And sometime over the course of the last few years, the boys went their separate ways and became estranged. They’re now two completely different people who haven’t seen each other in over a year and probably wouldn’t become friends were they to meet for the first time today.  In fact, they would probably hate each other.

Harold now works in high finance. His is now THE MAN and even has to deal with Occupy Wall Street-types who protest outside his offices. Harold also enjoys an upper middle-class life in the suburbs with a nice car and an even nicer fiancée. Kumar, however, is still Kumar — an unemployed burn-out who smokes weed all day and avoids responsibility like he does a shower. Closing in on 30, sadly, the reefer’s become an escape for Kumar, a way to avoid coming to terms with the emptiness of his life and the loss of his girlfriend. What had been recreational and rebellious in his youth, is now a pathetic crutch.

It’s Christmastime and Harold’s smoking-hot fiancee’s rather large family has come to stay for the holidays. The most important thing to Harold’s future father-in-law (Danny Trejo), a man who’s crazy about Christmas and someone with whom Harold is desperate to make a good impression, is the perfect tree. Harold promises everyone that when they return from church, the perfect tree will be decorated and waiting for them. They leave. Kumar shows up. Mayhem ensues.  

The story is only sporadically funny. In-between bits that are truly clever, like a clay-mation sequence and Neil Patrick Harris riffing on his public persona, the jokes tend to be more miss than hit. The more vulgar (very vulgar) stuff meant to shock mostly falls flat, but some of the less politically correct moments involving race do hit the mark. It’s all good-natured and, in this day and age, pretty refreshing.

While this third chapter is definitely an improvement over the one-note Bush-bash that was chapter two, you can still sense The New Production Code at work. Some targets are safe. Some are not. Muslims and gays take no satiric hits and I still don’t understand a Hollywood that crusades against cigarettes but builds a trilogy around two sympathetic protagonists who, without any health consequences, love to smoke dope.

In the end, though, this is a story about two estranged friends who have gone their separate ways, grown apart, and are now uncomfortable in each other’s company. The emotional spine of the story involves them finding a way to become friends again, and this is something many of us can relate to. There are also some mature themes involving family and the reality that you actually do have to grow up eventually.

If you’re a fan of the genre or the first two, you’re going to enjoy the further adventures of… Others should probably stay away.

‘A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas’ is available at Amazon.

That’s one of the few bright spots to be found in “A Very Harold & Kumar3D Christmas,” the third chapter in the aggressively juvenile franchise. Our heroes are older and not much wiser, and now they’re taking on everything that’s sacred about the holidays.

—–

It’s getting harder to shock audiences today, but the new “Harold & Kumar” tries mightily to do just that. We get cocaine sniffing toddlers, Santa Claus suffering a massive head wound and an attempted rape by a character pretending to be gay.

Laughing yet?

The original “Harold & Kumar” caught us off guard by its generous ethnic casting and the clever use of an otherwise washed up Neil Patrick Harris. By now, it’s clear the franchise has nothing inventive to share, save the notion that stoners will line up to see any film marketed with their addled demographic in mind.

The new film finds Harold (John Cho) living the upper middle class dream. He’s got a plush Wall Street gig – where he can look down on the ubiquitous protestors from a safe distance – and a gorgeous Latina wife. His biggest worry is winning over her demanding father (“Machete’s” Danny Trejo).

Meanwhile, a bearded Kumar (Kal Penn) lives in a cluttered apartment where he can smoke up to his heart’s content. Even the news that his longtime girlfriend is pregnant can’t cut through his arrested development haze.

The old friends haven’t so much as seen each other in two years, but they reconnect after a mysterious package addressed to Harold is sent to Kumar’s apartment by accident. Kumar proceeds to burn down Harold’s Christmas tree, sending the pair on a wild trip through town to find a suitable replacement.

That journey leads to a series of so-so gags, a botched attempt at Claymation and the dispirited feeling that these stoners should have headed back to White Castle and left us alone. The original movie won us over, in part, due to the casting of two non-white males in the lead roles and the stereotype deconstruction that followed. But with “Christmas,” we’re left to endure limp ethnic gags like the notion that all Asians look alike.

The film’s aggressive use of 3D is essentially meaningless. The floating debris, be it hurled eggs, ganja smoke or shards of glass, exists solely for calorie-free amusement. If there’s a funny way to utilize the technology, this film can’t think of it.

The meta-gags similarly fall flat. The script references Penn’s real-life gig as an Obama employee as well as Cho’s side gig as the new Mr. Sulu in the “Star Trek’ reboot. Reliable scene stealer Thomas Lennon provides the bulk of the laughs as Harold’s straight-laced pal who brings his young daughter along, unaware of the hijinks to come. He’s the anal retentive parent caught in the Harold & Kumar vortex, and every reaction shot Lennon delivers is priceless.

It wouldn’t be a “Harold & Kumar” film without Harris, and the openly gay actor sends up his image by playing a straight version of himself pretending to be gay. Confused? It plays much better than it sounds, although even his extended cameo wears out its welcome. The film’s final moments offer a modicum of Christmas  charm, but by then it’s far too late to spring season’s greetings on ticket buyers.

“A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas” won’t replace “A Christmas Story,” “Elf” or “Christmas Vacation” as the country’s next yuletide favorite. It’s solely for stoners content to spend another 90 minutes with this generation’s Cheech and Chong.

While I’m not sure of an official reason, one could posit that subscriptions to the Time are so far down that they must meet their obligations to advertisers and get the glossy fliers out to a certain amount of people. Whatever the reason, along with the fliers for the big box stores was an edition of USA Weekend.  On top, it read Los Angeles Times | Times Select.

In it was the typical Hollywood news (‘Justified’ is being renewed!), some consumer report-type articles, and a big feature on kids being healthy and happy. Also mixed in were two stories of less than 500 words each. One was meant as an homage to leftist dogma, the other a flat-out lie.

First, the dogma showed up in a 150+ word article about actor Ian Somerhalder. The actor plays Damon on CW’s ‘The Vampire Diaries’ (before this, he played Boone on ‘Lost’). In the piece, they talk about him being a heartthrob, about how down home he is, as he comes from Louisiana. They even mention he was teased as a child. His football teammates at his Catholic high school dubbed him a “pretty boy” because of his career as a model. All of this set up showing Somerhalder as a regular guy to get to the hit, when he proclaims that he is an “environmentalist,” stating:

We humans are like cancers: We multiply and take, take, take. Now I want to give, give, give.

An article that was quick to point out his TV cred, as well as the near 1 million Twitter followers he has, is highlighting his environmentalism  - where he calls human beings “cancer.”  Is USA Weekend aware of how dangerous this kind of talk is?

The last person to talk of human beings this way was James Lee, also an avowed environmentalist, who tried to take hostages at the Discovery building in Silver Spring, MD.  Along with planting bombs on himself, and around the building, he had a list of demands for Discovery channel, which included:

The Discovery Channel and it’s affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs….where solutions to save the planet would be done…. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions.

“Parasitic human infants.”  ”Cancers.”  This is who USA Weekend wants our kids to look up to and follow on Twitter.

The second article focused around actor Kal Penn, who can be seen in the third installment of the Harold and Kumar films, ‘A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas’ starting Nov. 4th. Penn is also noted for leaving Hollywood during a stint on the popular Fox drama ‘House.’ Penn’s character was killed off (via suicide) so that the actor could go to work for the Obama administration in the Office of Public Engagement in 2009. In 2011, Penn was back in Hollywood making his third movie in the stoner comedy series. Asked about his return to filmmaking, Penn said:

It’s sort of like the yin and the yang. What I love about D.C. is the intellectual focus, and what I love about L.A. is the creative focus. It’s nice to be back and working the other part of your brain.

I don’t know Penn, but as an outsider looking in I don’t buy this response. Penn believed so much in Obama that he campaigned for him and gave up a starring role on one of the highest rated shows on TV at the time to work for him. Less than two years later, he returns to Hollywood to pick up his movie career.

What happened to serving the people? Or, more to the point, what happened to serving Obama? Or buying into the Obama thesis – that the private sector is bad? Was no thought given to the words of the First Lady, who chastised Americans for engaging the private sector, telling them to make less money working in the public sector for the good of their nation?

Penn’s return to Hollywood isn’t about being creative; it’s about the money. The creative side of the brain can be expanded anywhere. He could paint. He could write in a journal. He could be a mime on the weekends, entertaining crowds of people on the National Mall. But he chose to return to Hollywood to make a living.

There is nothing – NOTHING – wrong with that. But it’s the lack of honesty and transparency that makes the USA Weekend piece so off-putting. His choice to return to a million-dollar career was not mentioned, just his desire to return to “creativity.”

After these two articles, it’s no wonder the LA Times is dropping circulars on my doorstep each Sunday without me having to subscribe.

The article, riddled with factual errors and omissions characteristic of a student and/or mainstream media, lays out a revisionist’s version of what happened behind the scenes of the scandal. During the interview, conducted by a journalism graduate student and admitted “close friend” of the former White House appointee, Sergant states that he was called to a meeting in the West Wing at the end of his four-month stint in the White House’s Office of Public Engagement. The White House, fully aware of his role as an art activist during Obama’s election campaign, offered Sergant two jobs. One was to continue at the White House, and the other was as the Communications Director of the National Endowment for the Arts. Sergant selected the NEA.

President Obama and Yosi Sergant

“I think [the West Wing] made a bad decision to put me in a job without giving me any kind of guidance, not providing me with any kind of mentorship,” said Sergant in the interview. He continued, “That was a bad decision. I’d never worked in government before.”

However the White House knew where Sergant’s expertise resided, and how he would potentially put it to use in an arts position. He was the promoter behind the now famous Obama Hope poster. Sergant indicated in the interview that he was given some direction by the White House in his new position at the NEA. “The idea was that Yosi would help pave the way for the new director’s arrival,” wrote Hillel Aron, referring to Rocco Landesman, incoming Chairman of the NEA. On paving the way, Sergant said, “I started working on things that I knew were happening, that I thought would be safe… and I was wrong.” 

And, frankly, why wouldn’t he have thought it to be safe – he was working with the White House at the time. The project that Sergant was referring to was United We Serve, a national service initiative orchestrated by the White House Office of Public Engagement and the Corporation for National and Community Service. Among the many controversial comments during the call, Sergant stated, “I would encourage you to pick something, whether it’s health care, education, the environment, you know, there’s four key areas that the corporation has identified as the areas of service. And then my ask would be to apply artistic, you know, your artistic creative communities utilities and bring them to the table.”

It was this encouragement, at a time when town halls had gone nuclear over the issue of health care, which ultimately put Sergant in hot water.

Following a statement made in my first article regarding the invite coming from the NEA, the Washington Times reported that Sergant claimed he did not send out the invite. After revealing that the invite I received was in fact sent directly from Sergant, on September 1st the Washington Times published an article entitled “Official Dishonesty.” Aron reports that Sergant called the White House the next day asking if he should resign. Sergant stated, “They did not think that what I did merited the response of the media.”

However, at the time Sergant contacted the White House, they were unaware of exactly what the conference call revealed about their arts effort. In an email marked “Importance: High” and sent on September 11^th, Kalpen Modi, Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, asked, “Do either of you have a recording or transcript of the CNCS call you did with Yosi & NEA on 8/10.” The response from two federal officials at the Corporation was that they did not have a transcript or a recording of the call:

The full transcript was released on September 21st, revealing controversial conduct by not only Yosi Sergant, but Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Engagement, and Nell Abernathy of the Corporation for National and Community Service. In reaction to the conduct on the call, including comments I highlighted by a White House employee Buffy Wicks, the following day the administration backpedaled from an earlier claim that I had “misconstrued the purpose” of the call. The administration issued new guidelines, as reported by ABC News’ Jake Tapper, “to prevent such a call from ever happening again.” The memo, written by White House Counsel Gregory Craig, provided new guidelines to all federal agencies for public outreach meetings. “We regret any comments on the call that may have been misunderstood or troubled other participants,” said White House spokesman Bill Burton in an issued statement. “We are fully committed to the NEA’s historic mission, and we will take all steps necessary to ensure that there is no further cause for questions or concerns about that commitment.” This White House statement appeared to concede that the effort was outside of the NEA’s original purpose.

To date, Buffy Wicks and Nell Abernathy still remain in their positions while Sergant has been left with Michelin stains.

Sergant seems to disagree with the White House’s actions. “I don’t believe that what I did was wrong,” Sergant stated in his interview with Aron. “I believe that what I did came at a time when all the focus was on health care reform, and [that's] where they needed to put their time and energy… could they have stood up for me if they wanted to? Sure. Am I worth the political capital? They had just lost Van Jones.”

Why would Sergant feel as if he did something wrong – he was in fact working with the White House on this arts effort.

Writer Hillel Aron and Yosi Sergant

The writer and Sergant claim that there was no political advocacy on the call. However, both the NEA and the White House have released separate statements stating that some of the language was “not appropriate” and admitting that there were “appearance issues,” respectively. During the interview Sergant stated that he never mentioned “Public Option” in his encouragement, but rather offered “blood drive” posters as an example of the type of art that he hoped would come out of the meeting. But that does not pass the smell test for what actually happened. The example that Sergant and the other federal employees highlighted during the conference call was a Rock the Vote project designed to “engage young people, in particular, on the issue of a new environmental movement.” Given that the call participants were avid Obama supporters, the art that came out of the meeting was, unsurprisingly, highly political in nature – a fact that cannot be changed by a friend attempting to rewrite history. Also omitted from the story was the fact that after resigning, one of the first projects Sergant worked on with another activist call participant was called “Public Option Please” that attacked Joe Lieberman’s wife in hopes of getting his vote for the senate’s version of health care reform.

The writer also claims that Sergant “simply copy / pasted the text from a United We Serve e-mail.” However FOIA documents clearly show that Sergant helped develop and edit the invite with Nell Abernathy, a fact that Aron’s graduate journalism professors may like to know if he is being graded on accuracy. If Aron’s article was written for his fiction professors, I retract this criticism.

I’ve stated throughout my articles that the White House was ultimately to blame for this controversial arts effort. The administration was fully aware of Sergant’s activist affinity and placed him in a position to put that skill to work. Unfortunately, political activity at a federal agency, indirectly or otherwise, is prohibited. The fact that the NEA and the White House threw Sergant under the bus is not a fact lost on the person left smelling like rubber.  When asked by Aron if he thought someone from the White House was going to stick up for him, Sergant responded, “I knew they wouldn’t.”

It would appear through these new statements, Mr. Sergant, in part, agrees with me that the White House has mud on their hands – albeit for different reasons. The only question left for Sergant is, how much longer will he let the White House affect his integrity and blame him for actions he was appointed to perform.

For my actor friends, though, there was a bit more trepidation.  After all, they were the actual celebrities on this celebrity tour, the ones people would want to meet.  I doubt they are alone.  In fact, I suspect that a big reason why more actors in Hollywood don’t volunteer their time with the USO is that they simply don’t know what the experience will be like.  Sure they’ve seen video of Bob Hope out entertaining crowds of troops, but as an actor, you don’t carry your show on the road.  Will the troops even care that you are there?  What will you have to offer them?  Is it uncomfortable?  Is it political?  Fortunately for me, the actors in my party decided to give it a try in spite of these questions.  Here is what we learned.

For the actor, the USO offers an alternative to its live music and comedy shows.  It is the Hollywood Handshake Tour, and it’s just what it sounds like.  Actors meet the troops, eat with them, take pictures with them, sign autographs for them, and thank them for their service to Uncle Sam.  Oh, and they shake their hands.  If we were worried that this would seem insignificant compared to a live performance show, that worry was quickly dispelled.  The troops simply could not have been more gracious and welcoming.  None of the actors wanted to seem pretentious (they were there to show their gratitude to the troops, not to posture or promote anything), but to our surprise, the lines at each event were hundreds of people deep.  People literally gave up part of their day to wait for the chance to shake hands with the actors, and get this, to thank them for coming.  That people sacrificing so much for us would turn around and thank us for the simple “sacrifice” of getting to be in their company left us all speechless, but then, these soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are just the finest, most decent people on earth.

As far as the comfort level, when we arrived at the airport, we were greeted by our USO tour manager, whose job was to make sure we had everything we needed and were always where we needed to be.  All of the international travel was business class on civilian planes, although some of the inner-theater travel is military.  In our case, that meant getting to fly out to sea on a COD and actually LAND ON THE DECK OF A FREAKING AIRCRAFT CARRIER!  Again, speechless…

In Bahrain, we were put up in a beautiful, high-end hotel, and in addition to our tour manager, both a local guide and a military liaison met us.  Add to that our USO supplied photographer and we were really left to want for nothing.  In Djibouti, our accommodations were less ornate, but still extremely comfortable.  Our liaison, Karen, picked us up from the airport and took us to our private lodgings on the base.  We stayed in a variant of the same CLUs (Containerized Living Units), basically large shipping containers partitioned into two-bedroom, air-conditioned apartments that the troops stay in.  The food was all great, the AC was always cold, and a man sleeps soundly knowing that the United States Army is guarding the gates.

It is also worth noting that you never feel your time is being squandered, other than perhaps when you are waiting for flights at international airports.  When we weren’t participating in the scheduled events with the troops, we were dropping in on parts of the base we weren’t scheduled to see.  A trip to the medical facility, or the base fire department, a quick tour of the flight-line and a chance to sit in a C-130…  The days are full and meaningful.  Plus, the MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) teams always want you to experience some of the culture that the troops experience as well, which in our case meant a trip to the Grand Mosque in Bahrain, an audience with a village chief in Africa, and a brief time volunteering at an orphanage where our service members devote so much of their free time to the children that the nuns who oversee the facility literally can’t accommodate all of them.

Finally, let me address the question of politics.  Several actors may have questions like, “What if I support the troops, but not the war they are fighting?”  My answer is simple– keep your opinions to yourself.  The troops do.  In fact, not one person, from the civilian cooks, to the enlisted men and women, the officers, or even the Admiral we met made a single unsolicited political comment.  Americans in uniform serve the National Command Authority.  When they get their orders, they perform with a level of skill and professionalism that is without equal.  In short, no matter what the politics of the individual soldier, they are professionals.  You may or may not agree with their orders, they may or may not agree with them, but they aren’t there to philosophize, and we weren’t either.  One of the actors in our group recently quit his job on a hit television show to go to work for the Obama administration, and I may or may not have voted George W. Bush as a write-in candidate in the last election, but there were no heated debates, no strange agendas or conflict.  Just like the soldiers are there for one purpose, to execute the orders of the President, we were there for one purpose, to thank those troops for that service.  It couldn’t have been a more neutral, positive experience.

One request we did hear again and again from the troops was to simply tell their story, and what a story it is.  A story of bravery, hardship, camaraderie, and sacrifice… But there is something else, something I had never realized before.  Time and time again the people doing these difficult jobs told us how much they actually like it.  To a selfish man like me, that prospect had never entered my mind.  I assumed the people who join the military were taking one on the chin out of a sense of duty, and to be sure, that is part of it, but there is a beauty in what they do that isn’t a labor at all.  When a sailor on the Eisenhower wakes up every morning, he knows his place in the world.  He has a specific function, and is highly trained and very, very good at his job.  And he lives in dedicated service to no less worthy a cause than the defense of his home and his family.  There is a peace and a confidence in that sort of life that I think a lot of us would be very lucky indeed to find in our own.  These are not mindless cogs in the military machine.  These are free men and women living rich, full lives in service of a noble calling.  They deserve our support and our thanks, yes, but they may deserve something of our envy as well.

In the end, the whole experience was just spectacular.  All of the actors felt the same, and we all look forward to our next outing with this great organization.   It would be a glorious day if the USO had to turn people away because they were simply overwhelmed with volunteers wanting to thank our troops, and I think that if more entertainers knew what a fantastic experience it is, that day would be now.  I got on the plane this first time because Gary Sinise, who gives more of his time in tribute to our Armed Forces than just about anyone, speaks so highly of his travels with the USO.  I will do it again because of what a remarkable time it was, and what remarkable group of people the men and women of the United States Military actually are.   I hope others give it a try as well.

Last week’s episode of the Fox Network medical-mystery series House included a Big Event meant to shock the show’s viewers and send the story line in an interesting new direction, as one of the main characters of the series was killed. As it happens, the show’s fans figured out exactly who it would be, several days in advance of the program’s airing, as the kind of public conversation the Internet makes so easy enabled a mass pooling of information and instant critiquing of same.

This almost instantaneous accumulation and processing of information makes the web something of a superbrain. Yes, figuring out the plot twists of television shows may not be the most productive use of people’s time and brainpower, but this somewhat frivolous achievement does indicate the impressive potential of the Internet as a mass information processing tool.

This capability makes the Internet simultaneously a potential source of astonishing public benefits and the most powerful generator of nonsense ever created.

An interesting side note (plot spoiler follows): Entertainment Weekly revealed the morning after the show aired that Kal Penn, who played the character who died in the episode, will be leaving the show to join the Obama administration as associate director in the White House Office of Public Liaison.

I have no idea what that particular agency is, but I’m quite sure it’s a good deal less useful than an entertaining TV mystery series.

—S. T. Karnick

Life’s episode “Initiative 38″ has a fairly unbelievable plot: a woman working on an initiative to ban handguns is murdered and there is one major suspect, P&K, a gun company. Here is some of the dialogue:

Detective Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis): We are saying that someone came here to kill your wife. Can you think of who that might be?

Harold Amis: Yes, I can. Initiative 38.

Woman who works for Initiative 38: Initiative 38 is a comprehensive ban on handguns. Lisa was working to get it passed.

Detective Seever (Crews’ partner): How comprehensive?

Woman who works for Initiative 38: We were working to take back our streets.

Seever: Getting any push back from the gun companies?

Woman who works for Initiative 38: Getting push back? Ya, there was a lot money coming in against us from the other side. From P&K guns. I didn’t think that they would do this though. Lisa was the face of Initiative 38.

Seever: Lisa Amos is the face of Initiative 38. If that passes, P&K guns gets hit hard.

On the one side, the show notes all the carnage from guns being used to kill people. The only argument offered for guns is that they produce jobs for those who make them and that guns are the one manufactured product left that we can produce cheaper than China.

Of course, there is no mention of defensive gun use and that guns are used to stop crime about 4 to 5 times more frequently than they are used to commit it. No mention that while police are extremely important in stopping crime (indeed, my research shows them to be the single most important factor), the police themselves understand that they virtually always arrive on the crime scene after the crime is committed. Obviously, the question of what victims should do when they are facing a criminal by themselves is ignored.

The notion that gun makers, which are fairly small companies, are going to donate a lot of money to defeat an initiative as the episode suggests is also fairly unbelievable. The donations to defeat such initiatives would tend to be a lot of very small donations from people who care about being able to defend themselves and their families and the principle of self-defense.

“House” often goes after gun ownership. It only mentions people not having health insurance more frequently. In the episode “Simple Explanation,” Kutner (Kal Penn) commits suicide with a gun. There is all the normal dialogue about how he probably bought the gun for self defense and instead used it to commit suicide.

For those interested, the National Academy of Sciences released a 2004 report that comprehensively reviewed academic research studying guns and suicide. The panel set up under the Clinton administration surveyed the extensive literature from public health, economics, and criminology. The Academy concluded that, “Some gun control policies may reduce the number of gun suicides, but they have not yet been shown to reduce the overall risk of suicide in any population.” The point is that there are a lot of ways to commit suicides, and you would pretty much have the same rate of suicide even if guns disappeared tomorrow.

However, I would argue that there isn’t even a lot of evidence that gun bans or gun lock laws reduce gun suicide rates.

Kal Penn was killed off in the show so that he could go work for the Obama administration. It is probably somewhat appropriate that he got killed off in a way that provided a politically correct lesson for viewers.

Kal Penn’s character killed himself on “House.” Kal Penn didn’t commit career suicide by accepting a job in the Obama administration. Penn is merely taking Tinseltown’s love of politics to another level. While it’s not unprecedented for the stars of B-movies to find themselves in the White House, it certainly is unusual. Political activism didn’t hurt the careers of Oscar winners Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, and George Clooney. Their Oscars might be seen as recognition of that activism. After all, their awards came as a result of performances in rather politicized films. If Kal Penn felt typecast as a player in raunchy college comedies, he should have no such worries after his sojourn in Washington, DC. He will be a celebrity among celebrities. Roles will be there for the taking. Just watch: the critical acclaim that escaped him in ”Van Wilder” will have no trouble finding him, and Harold will be wishing that he had followed Kumar to the White House.

Penn, best known for his roles as Kumar Patel in the “Harold & Kumar” movies and most recently as Dr. Lawrence Kutner on the television series “House” told EW.com that he will be associate director in the White House office of public liaison.

“They do outreach with the American public and with different organizations. They’re basically the front door of the White House,” Penn said. “They take out all of the red tape that falls between the general public and the White House. It’s similar to what I was doing on the campaign.”

The Chicago Sun Times reports that Penn will be working with the Asian-American and arts communities. His start date is unknown. The office is run by senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett.

Penn was among many celebrities backing Barack Obama in his presidential campaign, and he spent a lot of his personal time volunteering for the campaign. The actor acknowledged that he will take a significant pay cut. “There’s not a lot of financial reward in these jobs. But, obviously, the opportunity to serve in a capacity like this is an incredible honor,” he said. (First daughters Malia and Sasha are also reportedly fans.)

Yes, that pay cut will be tough to stomach for Penn, but Malia and Sasha love him!  He’s doing it for the children!

Incidentally, for fans of House, Fox has posted absolutely preposterous “memorial” website for Penn’s character in the show, who committed suicide in last night’s episode.  It features a photo of the “deceased,” an “obituary,” and a link where fans can bid farewell to the departed “doctor.”  How utterly bizarre and macabre.