CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Actor and former Obama administration official Kal Penn said on a youth panel Wednesday that the Harold & Kumar characters played by himself and John Cho in a video promoting his live coverage for the Obama campaign of President Barack Obama’s acceptance speech tonight were not high in the video.
“There was no smoke there . . .the air was clean,” NBC Chief White House Correspondent and panel moderator Chuck Todd said after playing the video.
“No, not in a political ad,” Penn said over laughter from the audience.
Penn, who served in the Obama administration of the associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, added that “We were just hungry because it was the morning,” he said jokingly.
“Yeah, of course,” Todd retorted, his voice oozing with sarcasm.
In the video, Penn and Cho can be seen chomping down on chips, watching cartoons on the couch, surrounded by bottles of soda and boxes of left-over pizza. After President Obama asks for Penn’s help hosting the coverage, Cho, in character as Harold, simply says, “sweet,” and continue to zone out.
Considering that only Penn, not Cho, will be hosting the Democratic National Convention Thursday evening, the video was clearly a throw-back to the pot smoking Harold & Kumar movie series, in which the entire plot of the movies revolve around getting high. The plot of the first Harold & Kumar movie – Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle is that after getting blazed, Harold and Kumar embark on a trip to White Castle to satisfy their weed induced munchies, also known as being hungry ‘because it’s night time’ by Penn’s standards.
Regardless of what Penn professes, the actors were clearly pretending to be high in the video, as Todd subtly noted.
The fact that the Obama campaign and the President himself find the promotion of being a ‘slacker’ to be an appropriate message for youth is astounding.
