And They Say Vulcans Don’t Have a Sense of Humor

March 1, 2013 RSS Feed Print

Give the communications team at the White House credit. Hours after President Obama committed a sci fi #nerdfail that set caused geeks everywhere to feel a great disturbance in the Force, the White House Twitter account turned the incident into another vehicle for promoting his sequestration solution.

If you missed it, Obama tried to use a science fiction reference in his sequestration press conference today while explaining the limits of "leadership" in Washington. "This has been some of the conventional wisdom that's been floating around Washington that somehow, even though most people agree that I'm being reasonable, that most people agree I'm presenting a fair deal, the fact that they don't take it means that I should somehow do a Jedi mind meld with these folks and convince them to do what's right," he said.

[See a collection of political cartoons on Congress.]

The Force was not with the president—he was trying for Star Wars's "Jedi mind trick" but somehow Star Trek's "Vulcan mind meld" beamed in mid-thought—and millions of science fictions buffs all cried out in terror ... and then took to Twitter. New hash tags emerged from the gaffe like Planet Genesis from the Mutara Nebula: #franchisemeld and #ObamaSciFiQuotes.

It only took a little while before the White House embraced its destiny and Tweeted out the photo shown at the top of this blog post. Maybe everything proceeded according to Obama's design after all?

[See a collection of political cartoons on sequestration and the fiscal cliff.]

Given how often people have referred to Obama as Mr. Spock over the years, you'd think he'd know better. In fairness to Obama he might have gotten confused by the news that Star Trek director J.J. Abrams is warping over to the galaxy far, far away for Star Wars's Episode VII. If only he'd read this Paul Krugman column from earlier this week, he might have gotten in right.