Mr. Spock-like Obama morphs into Marvin the Martian
Insults Mr Spock, who actually was cerebral.
B
http://jewishworldreview.com/jonathan/gurwitz062410.php3
June 24, 2010 / 11 Teves 5770
*Mr. Spock-like president morphs into Marvin the Martian*
By Jonathan Gurwitz
For “Star Trek” fans, the Bush administration was hard enough to endure. Bush’s national security team was supposedly populated by Vulcans, an apparent reference to the humanoid race to which the USS Enterprise’s first officer, Mr. Spock, half belonged.
In fact, other than former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz’s passing resemblance to Spock’s father, the Bush Vulcans had nothing whatsoever to do with the final frontier. The appellation — popularized in James Mann’s 2004 book “Rise of the Vulcans” — derived from a famous statue of the Roman god of fire in Birmingham, Ala., hometown of Bush National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Now we have a president who many people believe actually is a Vulcan — the extraterrestrial kind. And no, this isn’t some concoction of the birther movement alleging Barack Obama is a space alien.
The first well-known reference to Obama as a Vulcan came in a June 2008 NPR interview with Henry Jenkins, then a professor of humanities at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “There’s something in the mythology that surrounds Barack Obama that seems, to me, echoes some of our assumptions about Spock,” Jenkins said. “He’s someone who’s been able to bridge worlds.”
This fascinating commentary chugged along on impulse power until March 2009, when New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd gave it warp speed. “Mr. Obama has a bit of Mr. Spock in him (and not just the funny ears),” she wrote. “He has a Vulcan-like logic and detachment.”
The release of a new “Star Trek” movie two months later transported the comparison to a Newsweek cover story. “Spock’s cool, analytical nature feels more fascinating and topical than ever now that we’ve put a sort of Vulcan in the White House,” acclaimed Steve Daly.
Thus, the Obama-is-Spock legend was born. Obama was endowed with supremely logical, analytical abilities. These he would boldly bring to bear on the problems of the universe, launching an age when “the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal … when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.”
That last quote wasn’t from Spock. It was from Obama himself after he secured the Democratic presidential nomination.
It turns out, however, that there’s more to leadership than cold logic, thorough analysis and sagacious powers of observation — something true fans of “Star Trek” know well. It’s a subject the original series plumbed in many memorable episodes.
Having placed Spock in the Oval Office, some people are now disappointed to discover that there’s no Vulcan death grip for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, that a mind meld won’t prevent fanatical extremists from trying to blow up the United States or that logic won’t convince Iran and North Korea to abandon their nuclear weapons ambitions.
Responding to calls from everyone from Spike Lee to the once logically-enthralled Maureen Dowd to show more emotion, Obama recently had his amok moment about the gulf gusher. “I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar,” Obama told the “Today” show’s Matt Lauer. “We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers so I know whose ass to kick.”
Memo to the science officer in chief: Having experts advise you on whose ass potentially to kick will not be widely viewed as competent leadership. Rather than making you look like a cool commander, it causes you to resemble a cartoon character.
“This makes me very angry — very angry indeed!” is the declaration of a famously detached “Looney Tunes” character. That’s not Spock in the Oval Office. It’s Marvin the Martian.