September 7, 2012 by David K. Sutton
Reminder: Obama Doesn’t Support Marijuana Legalization and Kal Penn is not Kumar
I’d like to remind my friends on the left that we put people in boxes too. We are sometimes guilty of exclusionary thinking just as people on the right are. I think we are on the correct side of important issues like marriage equality, civil rights, women’s rights and so on, but that doesn’t mean we own moral superiority in every aspect of life, and it doesn’t mean we are right about everything or that we can always decipher someone’s motives.
That brings us to Kal Penn’s support of President Obama. Penn delivered a speech at the Democratic National Convention and he is the host of their online convention coverage. He also served in the Obama administration as White House Office of Public Engagement, and he is the co-chair for President Obama’s re-election campaign. So, I’d say all the above has a little more weight than three Harold & Kumar stoner films, and I say that as a fan.
There are some on the left who are calling out Kal Penn for supporting President Obama because Obama doesn’t support legalization of marijuana. First of all, I’m not even sure Kal Penn is for legalization. Maybe he is, that’s not the point. Because Kal Penn’s character Kumar is a pothead that means Kal Penn cannot support President Obama. Really? This is pretty narrow-minded for liberals, don’t you think? Even if Kal Penn was the biggest marijuana legalization advocate on the planet he is still a living, breathing and thinking human being. He is “allowed” to care about more than one issue.
When Penn was asked about his support of Obama he said, “I feel like I get this question because of the nature of the movies I’m in, and I know that you wouldn’t ask Anthony Hopkins whether he eats people in real life after ‘Silence of the Lambs.’ — So I’m just going to call you out on that.”
And I’m just going to call out everyone else who thinks this way. / photo by U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan Public Affairs
