The Politics of Star Trek

Ted putting on his best Captain Kirk impersonation

In an effort to further divide Trekkies, Ted Cruz opined on rival Captains James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard, considering the former a working-class Republican and the latter an effete Democrat. It was one of those free-flow interviews that Cruz relishes, able to sound off on anything and everything, but the actor who played Captain Kirk had a bone to pick with Ted. William Shatner is a Canadian citizen and considers himself politically independent, as he says was the same for the character he played so many stardates ago. Not that it really matters other than to show that Ted is not a Gen X hipster but rather a traditionalist when it comes to his pop culture icons.

Ted seems to enjoy playing the clown, even mimicking all the main characters of The Simpsons. It wasn't very successful, but heh anything to identify with the masses. It's a far cry from the Donald, who gets so easily offended that he resorts to name calling and giving out personal phone numbers whenever someone has the audacity to question his motives.

Here was Anderson Cooper asking him the simple question how he planned to overcome his largely unfavorable rating among voters, and Scrooge McDuck got all huffy and puffy and fired back that the problem was Cooper himself and the media, which conducts such silly polls. Who cares about a Washington Post poll when the Donald proudly proclaims he is leading across the board?

At least Ted has a self-deprecating humor about him. He doesn't get surly when challenged in an interview. He knows he has his supporters behind him, and that he will always be seen favorably in their eyes. Being interviewed by the New York Times shows what a good sport he is. After all, it was the NYT that chose to keep him off its best-selling books list, claiming he was bulk buying his latest piece of pulp non-fiction.

Ted chose to focus on pop culture, or at least the interviewer did, which he seems to know something about. You get the feeling this guy binge watches syndicated reruns on TiVo or Netflix to calm him down after a stressful day, as he rarely seems to show any stress on the campaign trail. Even when assailing President Obama or Mitch McConnell it doesn't appear that he harbors any real grudge against these guys. He's just using them as cannon fodder to ignite a spark in his assembled crowds. There isn't the mean-spirited nature that characterizes the Donald.

Does it really matter who was the better Starfleet commander? It's not like Trekkies are going to vote for him anyway. Ted fielded the leading question and gave the answer expected. The scariest part is this self-styled Evangelical candidate, who is an avowed climate change denier, is overseeing the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Space and Competitiveness, which oversees NASA. What would Captain Picard think of that?

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

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