Right, Like The “President” Doesn’t Know What A “Jedi Mind Trick” Is

As someone who was literally called “Spock” every day of my life from 3rd through 10th grades, this picture is highly gratifying.

GateHouse — Welp, late last week the President went on TV and mixed up a “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” things, and then the Internet died, keeled over, that very second, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Obviously we’re still hashing out whether this was a negative or a positive.

First things first: Here is what Obama said, and I warn you that if you thought his swearing on a fake Muslim Bible in his first inauguration was bad, the following may actually give you appendicitis: In a press conference about something having to do with a 400-year-long slap-fight with a sobbing John Boehner and those angry hobgoblins who work for the government who also hate the government, Obama started talking about science fiction movies, exactly all of which are more likely than a reality in which a theoretically functional government elects to install a land mine in its own front yard, then wakes up one morning and waddles right out on top of it. (That’s right: ALL sci-fi movies. “Lawnmower Man?” MORE LIKELY. “Spaceballs?” CONSIDERABLY MORE LIKELY. “The Running Man?” I’M PRETTY SURE WE HAVE THAT ALREADY.)

Obama, out loud, said the following:

“I’m presenting a fair deal, the fact that they don’t take it means that I should somehow, you know, do a Jedi mind meld with these folks and convince them to do what’s right.”

For those of you who learned to unclasp a girl’s bra before the age of 27, this is a GRIEVOUS AND GHASTLY ERROR, on the order of that time he meant to write “Socialist” on his presidential paperwork and wrote “Democrat” instead, one that CONFUSES the “Star Wars” Jedi mind trick, most famously used by Obi-Wan Kenobi in order to get the galaxy’s most wanted teenager past the desert-planet equivalent of mall security, and the “Star Trek” mind meld, which is when Spock touches your brain and learns your bank passwords.

Boba.

Naturally, this rather perfectly formed bit of Internet chum caused the web to go crazypants for a good long while. The confusion over Obama’s mangled nerdlinger reference went through all the stages of Internet — revelation, jokes, jokes about jokes, jokes about the jokes, backlash about the jokes, backlash about the revelation about the jokes, a Harlem Shake, everyone complaining the joke is now, and I’m quoting here “oldsauce,” and the joke pasted onto a picture of a cat, all in the span of about 14 seconds — faster than, hmm, faster than … well it was faster than 12 parsecs.

But in all the over-Mountain Dewed frenzy, the Internet missed something obvious.

Listen, Obama is a smart guy, right? He got himself elected president while being a secret Kenyan Maoist who writes his own prayers to the Prophet Mohammed, so I mean, this is no lackwit. Of COURSE he knows his Jedi Mind Trick from his Vulcan Mind Meld, HE’S THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, at least he would be if Justice Whatshisname didn’t keep screwing up the oath of office at the inaugurals.

This purported faux pas? Yeah he did that on purpose. So that instead of talking about whatever his speech was about, which I think was like how no airports will be able to afford security anymore and our military is now four planes and whoever subscribes to “Field and Stream,” we’re talking about TV shows with lasers that go pew pew pew. This isn’t a guy who has to spend a lot of time wondering which catalyst the blank-eyed clown people on TV will pick up on: the intricate mathematics and tax implications of some obscure political legerdemain, or jokes about Darth Vader. It’s like he conjured up some sort of PRESIDENT JEDI MIND VULCAN TRICK FLUX CAPACITOR Q-BERT QUANTUM LEAP, and I think you’re sharp enough to see what I did there. If anything he’s President Boba Fett.

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Related, sort of

• 87 Reasons Dads Should Never Touch “Angry Birds Star Wars”
• So, Uh, I Didn’t Hate “The Phantom Menace” This Time

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Which brings up an interesting point: In the second prequel we discover that Boba Fett is actually the stormtroopers, that they all come from the same bowl of clone-DNA jelly or whatever, which begs the obvious question: Why is Boba Fett so awesome when stormtroopers all suck so much? He’s all like mackin’ on honeys at the space bar, and they’re basically mute marshmallow Peeps with worse aim than you find in most of our nation’s airport bathrooms. THESE are the kind of issues we should be dealing with here, people. Unless they’re already oldsauce.