-By Warner Todd Huston
Remember how the left always asserted that George W. Bush was stupid? Remember how they were so thrilled to have the Obammessiah that spoke so well, a president that was perpetually the smartest man in the room? Well, after the many stammering TelePrompter free stump debacles during the campaign, many began to doubt this claim of his superior intelligence. Certainly by itself this is no big deal. But added with the whole here is another small dent in the perception of Obama’s overrated superiority.
Newsweek conducted a Q and A with the president at the end of which appears a few questions concerning his recent choices of entertainment. During the Q and A The One admitted he watched the reboot of Star Trek in the White House movie theater claiming that everyone was saying he was Spock. But two other things he said clanged badly: one arrogant and the other somewhat ignorant.
First the arrogant:
And the last movie you saw?
Now, movies I’ve been doing OK [with] because it turns out we got this nice theater on the ground floor of my house … So Star Trek, we saw this weekend, which I thought was good. Everybody was saying I was Spock, so I figured I should check it out and–[the president makes the Vulcan salute with his hand].
So The One likes to be called Mr. Spock, eh? That is bad enough, but the fact that he so automatically called the White House “my house” is simply as arrogant as it comes. It isn’t “your” house Mr. President. It’s the people’s! The man’s sense of entitlement is disgusting.
Next the ignorant:
Did you watch that when you were growing up?
I used to love Star Trek. You know, Star Trek was ahead of its time. There was a whole–the special effects weren’t real good, but the storylines were always evocative, you know, there was a little commentary and a little pop philosophy for a 10-year-old to absorb.
I find it amusing that the “Spock” of the White House, the smartest president evah doesn’t know the difference between “evocative” and “provocative.” By the later half of his sentence Obama clearly meant provocative, not evocative.
The word evocative simply means to provoke emotional response or memories. But by focusing on “philosophy” and “commentary” Obama obviously meant that Star Trek provoked thinking so it was intellectually provocative not emotionally evocative. Additionally, how much evoking can a 10-year-old indulge?
So, why doesn’t the smartest man in the world know the difference between provocative and evocative?
Maybe he isn’t as smart as the left would have it?
(As for me, I saw Trek last night. Fun film. Unfortunately, it never once felt like Star Trek to me. But it did evoke some fond memories with its homage to the original series!)
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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Hey, I finally figured out how to log in to comment here! WordPress demands a separate password for each blog I want to comment on. Rather absurd!
Anyway, our current Spock (The One) misses the fact that most of the original Star Trek plots were provocative but with one overriding plot: Captain Kirk meets scantily clad (for that time) woman, falls in love, runs into earthshaking (sometimes literally) problem that has little or nothing to do with said woman, Kirk realizes his one true love is the starship Enterprise, Kirk dumps woman and returns to his one true love to solve earthshattering problem with the help of Spock’s logic and McCoy’s wisdom.