In a gaffe that outraged the internet, President Barack Obama said earlier today that he cannot perform a “Jedi mind meld” with Republican leaders in order to avert the most recent manufactured disaster in Washington known as the “sequester.”
But instead of talking about how worthless and intransigent our government has become, we’re instead talking about the nerd rage created by the Commander in Chief accidentally mixing up two sci-fi franchises.
My favorite tweet on this was from political/economics reporter from Slate Matt Yglesias: Loose talk of a “Jedi mind meld” is the inevitable result of the JJ Abrams Cliff.
Ha! See, even the mightiest among us can succumb when these worlds collide. I daresay, Obama is the geekiest president we’ve had in a long time. From this picture with Nichelle Nichols last year, to this campaign picture from 2008 standing next to Superman in Metropolis, IL, to his appearance on the cover of Amazing Spider-Man #583, to being chased by a pint-sized Spider-Man, I should say his geek credentials are pretty good.(I bet he watches Game of Thrones, though I can’t prove it– he does watch Homeland, though) And compare him to Bush? Clinton? Bush? Reagan? Carter? Ford? Nixon? Come to think of it, have we ever had a geek president other than Obama?
But everyone likes to beat up on Obama. And why not? He is, after all, the source of all of our woes and problems. Or at least, so I’ve been assured by my conservative friends.
For the uninitiated, Obama mistakenly conflated the Jedi mind trick, a tactic used by ObiWan Kenobi (among many others) to trick the weak-minded stormtroopers in the original 1977 Star Wars, with the Vulcan mind-meld, a practice which allows two people to share thoughts via telepathic transfer, most famously used in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, to allow Spock to transfer his consciousness into Dr. McCoy. If you’d like to argue and say that the most famous mind meld was actually when Spock’s father Sarek shared minds with Captain Picard to allow him to overcome the effects of Bendii syndrome, that is also an acceptable answer. Ditto for if you want to talk about Qui-Gon using mind tricks in Episode I or Luke in Return of the Jedi.
Anyway, in an attempt to save face, the White House has just released the following picture via Twitter:
Not bad, Obama. Not bad.
And so I would like to say of this entire thing, in the voice of my cartoon doppelganger, Comic Book Guy: Worst. Controversy. Ever.
Cut the guy a break. He’s dealing with an impossible situation with impossible people that brought this manufactured crisis on themselves and now want to blame him for it.
So he mixed up Star Wars and Star Trek. Big deal. Cut him a break, nerds.
I agree, both of those franchises are separate and, basically, holy and untouchable. But just because some dude misspoke about your favorite thing and ” target=”_blank”>got chocolate in your peanut butter, so f@#$ing what? Let’s all put down the pitchforks and torches, and maybe actually care about something that matters. Like, say, the actual impacts of this “sequester.”
Harrumf.