It’s a reverse Dorian Grey-the more we stare inward, the more beautiful we become in the eyes of our shared popular culture. It’s something much more frightening, more Lacanian. But we tend to think of the mainstream media as the whole of the problem: a force of banality, pulling the strings on what we see and what we don’t.
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We know all this, it’s been talked about (and talked about and talked about) in this same vaccuum. How many The Dark Knight Rises jokes did we have to suffer through for the Super Bowl Blackout? How many snarks about Jodie Foster’s ramblings at the Golden Globes? The Manti Te’o story, which officially received tenfold the coverage a 55-foot wide meteor did for striking the Earth, injuring over 1,200 people? The Internet’s giant echo chamber, magnifying the tiniest sound, is hardly reserved for politics. The top story on Reddit as I write this is Obama vowing to remove the penny. But pop on over to Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit, and we see the same obsession played out ad nauseum.
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We rightfully complain that today’s media focuses far too much on such minute, perhaps meaningless events. What the age of Twitter does, however, is give us the opportunity for the masses to participate in the mood of frivolity, the same gleeful schadenfreude formerly reserved for the elite producers of mass media. This obsession with public faux pas certainly existed long before Twitter: John Kerry parasailing Al and Tipper Gore’s sloppy on-stage kiss at the 2000 DNC any one of Reagan’s famous one-liners.
#Jedi mind meld meme full
The examples are countless: #Eastwooding, “ Binders full of women,” Big Bird, Marco Rubio’s thirst. Political events today are so scripted that any slight change in the program tends to gather a great amount of coverage, from traditional media but even more so online (compare this to British politics where MP’s regularly curse at each other and no one even spills their tea). However, the sci-fi slip-up had also made its way to mainstream media, culminating at point where even the White House had to join in on the fun. This is obviously quite predictable, given that the President’s gaffe is rooted in nerd culture, and nerd culture likes nothing better than correcting the populace at large on minor confusions of media franchises from the ‘70s and ‘80s. Within seconds, “Jedi mind meld” was a worldwide trending topic and had begun its march towards Reddit’s front page. But what do you think the Internet gravitated towards? Keep in mind, the man with the nuclear football was describing the labor of working with Congress, the product of the same dysfunction that has allowed the sequester to take effect and could cost the US economy 700,000 jobs over the course of the next year.
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LLAP," Leonard Nimoy emailed after the Associated Press sought his reaction.Īs you were.On the day sequestration was prompted to cut $85 billion from the budget of the federal government-slashing funds for unemployment assistance, inspections from OSHA and the FDA, and major defense programs-President Obama used the phrase “Jedi mind meld.” What’s even more surprising than the President of the United States using a popular culture sci-fi metaphor? He used it wrong.Īs any fan of Star Trek or Star Wars can tell you, the leader of the free world had confused two disparate concepts: the “Jedi mind trick” of the Star Wars universe and the “Vulcan mind meld” of the Star Trek universe. "Only a Vulcan mind meld would be effective on this Congress. Abrams will be manhandling new films for both outer space franchises.)Įmpire-on-Enterprise and Starfleet-meets-Skywalker are fine distraction from the sequester, but what about Congress? Let's turn now to political analyst Spock. (The rift between Wars/Trek was recently aggravated by the news that J.J. I think it's time to impeach.īut the White House - sensing a disturbance in the Force - were quick to jump on the contretemps with a meme of dueling fonts, poking fun at POTUS' Star Wars/Star Trek slip and making a point while trying to quell a nation of nerd rage. Obama just confused Star Trek and Star Wars by saying Jedi Mind Meld. Naturally, social media were quick to react. What did he do? In response to a question at a Friday press briefing, the president said this: He wouldn't do a "Jedi mind-meld" with Congress' top two Republicans to persuade them "to do what's right."Īs your 6 year old knows, Jedis are from " Star Wars." A "mind meld" is from " Star Trek." President Obama's overlapping science fiction references at a pre- sequester presser prompted a quick social media reaction to the flub.