Utterly gratuitous photo of the Extra Grumpy Cat
When Barack Obama crossed the nerd-culture streams in his Jedi Mind Meld moment last week, he created great joy on the internets: by combining the Star Wars Jedi Mind Trick and the Star Trek Vulcan Mind Meld into a single entity, he not only caused a great disturbance in the Force, he created the opportunity for a good, old-fashioned meme explosion.
And of course, the internet responded in fine form, with lots of talk of Obama losing the Nerd Vote, being banned from Comic-Con, etc. Good times all around!
But as Extra Grumpy Cat says,
When life gives you lemons, squeeze that shit and add vodka.
— Grumpy Cat (@ExtraGrumpyCat) March 3, 2013
And that’s exactly what the White House did, by jumping on the #JediMindMeld hashtag with a relevant joke of their own (including both Star Wars and Star Trek references)…AND a link to their own materials about budget sequestration. Good work taking advantage of a fleeting social media moment! Particularly one that Obama inadvertently created himself.
We must bring balance to the Force. #Sequester #JediMindMeld twitter.com/whitehouse/sta…
— The White House (@whitehouse) March 1, 2013
Of course, as the Daily Show pointed out, the real importance of the #JediMindMeld moment was that it gave cable news something to talk about other than actual news. Good job keeping your eye on the ball, folks — I’m glad there was nothing substantive happening in Washington that day.
– cpd