In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Penn says that he met Obama during the campaign and was since offered a position as a public liaison:

I got to know the President and some of the staff during the campaign and had expressed interest in working there, so I'm going to be the 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. 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.

Penn says that's he's not necessarily retiring from acting, and that the time-span of his White House job is unclear, but that he does plan to pursue a career in politics for the long haul. So, good for him.

[EW]

"I kept thinking to myself, 'God, if this was just, like, Kal Penn or George Clooney, or any of the other [Obama] surrogates or supporters ... there wouldn't be [any] question about it," the actress, 23, tells the Associated Press. "Nobody would even talk about it."

..."I was merely trying to express my delight at Obama's commitment in his campaign in every aspect, and his interest and his support [in] his surrogates, and his staff and his fellows, and how wonderful and refreshing that is," she says. "And it was manipulated into such an unfortunate media frenzy of kind of a non-story."

Au contraire, Scar-Jo! We here at Defamer can promise you that if Kal Penn or George Clooney would simply follow your lead and pose provocatively in an open cardigan (see above), we'd mock up a Photoshop before you could even say, "si se puede." Or was that your clone?

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

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