Gasp! The nation’s First Trekkie committed the cardinal sin of confusing Star Trek and Star Wars in the midst of urging cooperation between Democrats and Republicans on the sequester. Yes, it’s all here in the Washington Post —
During his news conference Friday, Obama spoke of achieving a “Jedi mind meld.” That phrase, which he uttered during extemporaneous (read: no prompter or script) remarks during the question-and-answer portion of the newser, appears to combine elements from two distinct sci-fi worlds.
Mind you, the difference in the Post’s treatment of Obama’s verbal slip and anyone else’s is that the reporter immediately followed up with coverage of how the Twitterverse is trying to redeem the mistake —
The gaffe inspired the Twitter hashtag #ObamaSciFiQuotes in which clever fans combined lines from the two…
Or in other words, deliberately imitated Obama’s mistake as if it was an intentional gambit in an entertaining word game.
This is so predictable. Isn’t it obvious that the President’s trivial slip-up requires a smokescreen of tweets? (Uh…)
It makes me wonder — If Obama took a Gerald Ford-like misstep down a flight of stairs, would YouTube be flooded with videos of smiling people flinging themselves headlong from the tops of staircases as though the President really meant to pay tribute to John Cleese?
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Why not? As I recall, a previous incumbent of the Oval Office once mentioned Iran when he meant Iraq. Or was it the other way around? … oh, those pesky Islamic nations … so hard to keep straight.
At least most presidents don’t have to “prove” their birth certificates aren’t forgeries … over and over. To every administration, a cross to bear.
@Taral: These are delivered like they are supposed to be Letterman-style daggers to the heart, but I’m not quite getting the relevance.
Actually, since J. J. Abrams is doing the next Trek movie and the next Star Wars movie, he gave Obama a secret briefing on how he’s going to unify the two series. Has Obama let slip a major plot point?
Using Hollywood accounting to solve the budget crisis?
Despite expectations raised by the administration’s humorous answer to the Death Star petition, the new “Whitehouse.gov/JediMindMeld” URL disappointingly leads to nothing more than a page of partisan political lecturing about the Sequester, without any detectable mention of mind-melding Jedis.
” If Obama took a Gerald Ford-like misstep down a flight of stairs, would YouTube be flooded with videos of smiling people flinging themselves headlong from the tops of staircases as though the President really meant to pay tribute to John Cleese?”
I doubt that, but President Ford took imitation pratfalls in good humor.
Due to his stunt falls in his imitations of Gerald Ford on Saturday Night Live, Chevy Chase hurt his back and suffered chronic pain, which led to an addiction to prescription pain medication. Ironically, he went to the Betty Ford Clinic for treatment. On a separate occasion Chase and his wife were at dinner at a restaurant in Palm Springs and were seated by their waiter next to the table at which Mr. and Mrs. Ford were eating. The Fords invited the Chases to join them for dinner and the four of them had an enjoyable dinner and a pleasant evening, with no problems about the imitations at all
That’s a great story. And adds another layer of meaning to Chase’s appearance in the video of Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” which some interpret as having references to Betty Ford and alcoholism.