President Barack Obama literally went where no man has ever gone before when he mixed references from Star Wars and Star Trek ... with the entire world watching.
Obama outraged sci-fi geeks across the globe when he referenced a "Jedi mind meld" while answering reporters' questions at the White House on Friday, March 1. The President was discussing automatic spending cuts after having met with House and Senate leaders.
"I am not a dictator. I'm the president," said Obama to reporters after the 52-minute tete-a-tete with congressional leaders.
Speaking on the fact that he couldn't very well use "burly Secret Service agents to keep lawmakers from leaving until everyone agreed on a budget," according to the Associated Press, Obama went on to state that he also couldn't exactly perform a "Jedi mind meld" with top Republicans Mitch McConnell or John Boehner to "do what's right."
Unfortunately, as any Star Wars fan or Trekkie worth his light saber or phaser (respectively) would know, Obama here was not doing what was right in mashing together the two most revered sci-fi universes of the last century.
Jedi and their "mind trick," of course hail from the world of George Lucas' Star Wars, whereas the mind meld is a Vulcan skill from the realm of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek.
A Jedi mind trick being a means of controlling someone by way of a simple flourish of the hand a la Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first Star Wars. A mind meld in Star Trek is a means of gaining knowledge from someone else's mind by physical contact (although, in an original Star Trek episode "The Devil in the Dark," physical contact was not necessary for a mind meld to take place).
"Only a Vulcan mind meld would be effective on this Congress," said Leonard "Spock" Nimoy in an email response to a query about the presidential maxima mea culpa, signing off with "LLAP [Live Long And Prosper]."
Hopefully, Obama will be able to take that ancient Vulcan wisdom to heart and move past the stink of ire he's produced in the nerd community that, until now, always thought him to be one of their own.
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