May 7th 2009

Really, Really Geeky Obama Worship

I

suppose it had to happen. Now that all the Messiah comparisons have worn out and gone all silly from the mocking and giggling they have generated, the fawning leftist message machine has had to turn elsewhere for glorification symbolisim to edify of The One … and they’ve found it, a whole new way to idoloize. 

Now hold up your hands and do that freaky, geeky Star Fleet salute and read on:

Spock has been on many minds lately, and not entirely because of the new film. Big thinkers in both print media and the blogosphere — from New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd to MIT media moguls — have referenced the Enterprise’s science officer in recent months, drawing parallels between the dependably logical half-Vulcan and another mixed-race icon: Barack Obama.

They’re not just talking about the ears. For those of us who watched the show in the 1960s (or during the countless reruns since), Nimoy’s alter ego was the harbinger of a future in which logic would reign over emotion, and rational thought triumph over blind faith. He was a digital being in an analog world; the Pied Piper who led our generation into the Silicon Age.

Anyone who followed the early “Star Trek” with regularity knows how charismatic Spock was. If there were two characters I wanted to be as a young man, they were Spock — and James Bond.

That’s Glenn Greenwald gushing. Obama: None of that foolish emotion, faith or realness. Here’s Dowd:

Speaking of the Enterprise, Mr. Obama has a bit of Mr. Spock in him (and not just the funny ears). He has a Vulcan-like logic and detachment. Any mere mortal who had to tell liberals that our obligations in Iraq and Afghanistan are far from over and tell Republicans that he has a $3.6 trillion budget would probably have tears running down his face.

As for Greenwald’s reference to the “MIT media mogul” Obama/Spock piece, let me just give you this freenzied introduction to it, with link:

Yes, yes – it’s no big secret that I’m a fan-grrrl from way back, so you can only imagine my squeee! upon reading Henry Jenkins’  pop-culture essay in which he maps the linkages between Spock and Obama.  (Jenkins is the director of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Program.)

Scotty, puh-leeeze beam me up to some alternative universe where this isn’t happening!

While I’m a big sci-fi fan, I am admittedly not a Star Trek kind of guy. And after all this, I know what movie I’m not going to go see this weekend.

p.s.: Sorry for the duplicative photos – Obama Drama’s money photoshop and this post’s Spock photoshop used the same base photo. What are the chances?

Share

1 Comment »

February 22nd 2009

Sunday Scan Lite

I

nside-the-Beltway Mom and Ex-Ambassador Step-dad need a ride to LAX this morning for their flight to Hawaii, so my time is limited. What you see is what you get this week.

Defying the laws of economics – After whipping out an $887 billion spending bill, following the two-parrt $700 billion Bush bank bailout and preceding the $75 billion housing loser bailout, Prez O tells us he’s going to cut the budget deficit in half by the end of his first term. Let’s see; that’s $1.7 trillion on top of the so-called $1.3 trillion existing deficit – and he’s going to do it by getting out of Iraq in 16 months and raising taxes on those who make more than $250,000 – while cutting taxes to everyone else? There’d better be a lot of those rich folks, and they’d better be making a whole lot more than $250,000.

(Of course the real deficit is vastly larger.  Obama’s $1.3 trillion figure does not include unfunded mandates that the government is legally obligated to pay, like Social Security.  He can pretend the number’s not there, but it is.

New Watcher of Weasels Feature – The Watcher of Weasels has started a new, intermittent feature, Weekend Weasel, and kicks it off with the decidedly weasely Stephen Fowler:

The first member nominated to the Watcher of Weasels wall of shame is none other than San Francisco celebrity liberal Stephen Fowler. This elite ass appeared on wife swap and was paired up with Gayla Long, a woman from a small town in Missouri that Fowler affectionately referred to as a “dumb redneck” and “lower class.”

Check it out. The Watcher really winds up a roundhouse on this one.  The only thing worse – much worse – than a San Francisco liberal is an arrogant San Francisco liberal.

War Gaming - Don’t know if you caught Glenn Beck’s War Room this week. Chilling stuff; experts talking about worst case scenarios with the economy, meltdown, and societal reactions.  One section talked about the “Bubba Factor” – folks becoming so afraid of the way the government’s going that they begin to protect themselves in armed compouds, like the militia movement that grew under Clinton’s watch.  Say what you will about this, but don’t say what Glenn Greenwald does:

What was most remarkable about this allegedly “anti-government” movement was that — with some isolated and principled exceptions — it completely vanished upon the election of Republican George Bush, and it stayed invisible even as Bush presided over the most extreme and invasive expansion of federal government power in memory. Even as Bush seized and used all of the powers which that movement claimed in the 1990s to find so tyrannical and unconstitutional — limitless, unchecked surveillance activities, detention powers with no oversight, expanding federal police powers, secret prison camps, even massively exploding and debt-financed domestic spending — they meekly submitted to all of it, even enthusiastically cheered it all on.

Where to start with this bufoon? Obama has expanded Government more in three weeks than Bush did in eight years.  Bush did nothing unlike what Lincoln or FDR did in times of war.  The surveillance programs Bush employed were limited and checked.  There was oversight over the detention program – Congress.  The “secret” prison camps were well known and were for terrorists, like a POW camp, not for U.S. citizens.  Guilty on the debt – but not nearly as guilty as Obama.  With idiots like this running around and having the ear of the new administration, hunkering down with an assortment of guns doesn’t seem alike all that bad an idea.

Share

2 Comments »

With Obama winning the presidency by seven percent, we can't blame the media. Their laudatory coverage and refusal to extensively probe into Obama's background and [lack of] experience was at best responsible for five percent of his vote, the pundits tell us. Here is a compilation of over 100 significant instances of pro-Obama/anti-McCain bias during the 2008 campaign.

For all 'Media Bias 2008' – Click Here