Nice. So while Sean Penn is just an irritating, big-mouthed, political blowhard, Kal Penn (a.k.a. “Kumar,” a.k.a. “Dr. Kutner“) is actually going to work for the White House as a low-level staffer:
[I]t’s not exactly a glamour job—he’s actually going to be a real live low-level White House staffer. As Penn explains, people in his new post “do outreach with the American public and with different organizations. They’re basically the front door of the White House. They take out all of the red tape that falls between the general public and the White House.”
Meanwhile, my other favorite Penn keeps stickin’ it to the man with Bullshit. He may be an irritating, big-mouthed, political blowhard (in your opinion), but at least he’s a libertarian—which is always a good get-out-of-jail-free card: “You don’t like that I’m all talk? Too bad! I’m free to be all talk and you’re free to do something about it!” Arch-liberals like Sean Penn, on the other hand, always end up looking like hypocrites because they demand action of everyone else without really getting their own hands dirty.
So that’s why they killed Kutner. I was like, what the hell man?
So the only difference between Sean Penn and Penn Jillette is that the libertarian gets off because they’re a libertarian?
Sounds partisan.
No, that’s a criticism of libertarianism, which has an antidote to allegations of hypocrisy built into it, together with little moral compulsion to do anything but tout liberty for its own value. Strong libertarianism comes part-and-parcel with an implicit denial that limitations on conduct should ever be allowed. A libertarian could certainly distinguish between the quality of limitations, for instance by asserting that governmental limitations imposed arbitrarily are worse than limitations imposed by the fundamental problems of living in society with other people. But the fundamental values of libertarianism are that liberty should win over limitations—that’s why it’s called libertarianism and not limitationism.
But liberalism, like Sean Penn’s, and conservatism, like that of moralist Republicans (e.g., opponents of Proposition 8), comes with moral dictates regarding one’s own quality of life, or about the quality of life for some defined class of people, but no moral qualms about adversely affecting the quality of life for others in order to enforce those moral dictates. That hypocrisy ranges from banning same-sex marriage to supporting terrorists with liberal (including socialist or communist) agendas.
For example (and this is just an exaggerated caricature for illustration), Penn Jillette could say something like, “I have the freedom to kick your ass and you have the freedom to fight back,” while Sean Penn (or Rush Limbaugh) could say something like, “I have the right to kick your ass because you’re evil, but since you’re evil, you have no right to fight back.”
Both views are simplistic, but I think strong libertarianism has the weak virtue of being merely foolish, while liberalism and conservatism have the terrible characteristic of being downright abusive.
But Sean Pean (in my opinion) is a good actor. We just watched Milk the other night. Very good. My hubby (who remembers the assassinations happening) said the movie was pretty close to following the actual events of that day.