President Obama's Star Trek

Maureen Dowd apparently saw the new Star Trek movie and was filled with hope that her job at the New York Times could be saved. She compares President Obama to Spock. "I dreamed that Spock saved our planet, The Daily Planet of journalism." She does make some good points about the decline in serious journalism. Blogger Glenn Reynolds thinks that serious investigative reporting is the place where newspapers have real advantages over the New Media.

To Maureen Dowd, President Obama is a new kind of Spock - an intellectual who keeps his own emotions in check (like the old Spock) but who can evoke intense emotion in others - to "charm both worlds".

Commanding his own unwieldy starship of blended species, with Cheney, Limbaugh and other pitiless Borg aliens firing phasers from all sides, Mr. Obama has certainly invoked Mr. Spock’s Vulcan philosophy of “Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” And he even recruited some impulsive Rahmulen muscle for his Utopia.

HIS Utopia. Think about that as you watch the video linked below. Remember all the things that went wrong, sometimes horribly wrong, with brilliant utopian plans in the 20th century.

In his new (low-budget) Afterburner video, Bill Whittle takes Dowd's Star Trek analogy and runs with it, with some snark between the serious points. He gives an interesting history of the Star Trek series, "the only genuinely American mythology in the modern world", before moving on to his main points.

Worth your time and deep thought, even if you don't agree with everything he says. For a little chuckle, check out the ironic caption under Captain Kirk at the very end of Bill Whittle's video (and his performance in the YouTube video linked here).

Whittle makes a reference to a farm boy, too. Victor Davis Hanson's piece fits in with Bill Whittle's video quite nicely.