White House Turns Star Wars / Star Trek Mistake Into Funny Meme

from the own-the-mistake dept

As I've said before, you better have a sense of humor if you're going to be a politician. Not too long ago, the White House issued a direct response to a petition that America build a Death Star, for instance. The writer of that response proved he had his wookies in a row when it came to knowledge of the Star Wars universe. The President last week? Not so much.

President Barack Obama mixed Star Wars and Star Trek metaphors in response to a question from CNN's Chief White House Correspondent Jessica Yellin in the White House Briefing Room on Friday, saying he didn't have the power to "somehow do a Jedi mind meld with these folks and convince them to do what's right."

The internet, as you'd imagine, lost their collective Sith (editor: is this a typo? I think this is a typo.). Message boards went crazy over the revelation that President Obama couldn't keep the Vulcan mind meld and the Jedi mind trick square in that noggin of his... so how can we trust him with drone strikes. Okay, so it wasn't that big a deal, but you have to give his staff credit for being able to own a mistake, silly as it may be, and turn it into an opportunity for the administration. Rather than get defensive about the silly news item, or even just ignoring it, the White House owned the mistake and poked a little fun at themselves while still trying to get their point across.

But then I saw the White House's response to Obama's unwitting mash-up and I had to admire the cheekiness of it. By the end of the day the White House Twitter account had posted the following meme photo, which in one fell swoop owned the error, proved that the White House knew its stuff in regards to Star Wars and Star Trek, and informed those following the story of the issue that the President was discussing when he made the slip-up.

We must bring balance to the Force. #Sequester #JediMindMeld twitter.com/whitehouse/sta… — The White House (@whitehouse) March 1, 2013

In case you can't see the tweet embed above, here's the image separately. If you're not familiar with the details of the two franchises, the yellow outlined words are a classic Star Wars font, while the white letters are typical Star Trek. Ditto the statements that match with the proper fonts. It's a "melding" (if you will) of the two properties in an attempt to "own" the mistake and try to actually get some political leverage out of it by pointing people to the White House's position on the matter. I'm going to leave the politics of the statement waaaaaaaaaay over there (I'm pointing to a fictional place that eats political commentary) and just say that I like politicians that don't take themselves too seriously. For the White House to also take that mistake and turn it into their own meme, utilizing the hash tag that was making fun of them for their own purposes, is simply deft.

Filed Under: jedi mind meld, president obama, sense of humor, sequester, star trek, star wars