For those who did not watch the Republican convention, The Daily Show broadcast a sneak preview of the biopic of Mitt Romney titled Mitt Romney: A Human Being Who Built That, showing how he had to struggle against great odds all the way to become a successful businessman, doing it entirely on his own, starting from the time when he was a mere sperm.
(This clip appeared on August 30, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
The narrator of the biopic is Leonard Nimoy. It stuck me on watching it that if the Republican convention organizers had really wanted a Hollywood surprise, they might have got better results with Nimoy than with Eastwood. He is the same age as Eastwood and like him has a devoted and passionate, if aging, fan base. But unlike Eastwood, he still retains a commanding voice and delivers his lines with authority. His Star Trek Vulcan catchphrase “Live long and prosper” is also a lot more positive and uplifting than Eastwood’s ominous “Go ahead, make my day”, plus it would appeal to the rich old people who make up a significant part of the Republican target audience. As a bonus, Nimoy could have accompanied it with the Vulcan salute, which always delights people.
I think it was a missed opportunity. With Eastwood, the Republicans appealed to the law-and-order, gun rights crowd whom they had anyway. By choosing Nimoy, the Romney-Ryan ticket could have sewn up the entire science fiction geek voting demographic which is pretty large and whose allegiance is currently uncertain.
I feel that most sci-fi geeks would support Obama, if for no other reason than the fact that Obama is pro REAL science and the Republicans would gut NASA, as well as replace science-based education with their bronze-age myths. Most sci-fi fans I know are fairly progressive, and wish to see the fiction turned into fact, and only by investing in science will that happen. The ‘market’ won’t do that, unless there is a quick profit to be made.
I wonder if there’s anything to that, i.e. if there really is a correlation between political affiliation and enthusiasm for sci-fi. I’d be skeptical, but who knows.
The bigger problem with Mano’s idea is I don’t think Nimoy would agree to it 🙂
“I feel that most sci-fi geeks would support Obama, if for no other reason than the fact that Obama is pro REAL science and the Republicans would gut NASA, as well as replace science-based education with their bronze-age myths”
Also he has this going..
Ha, good one! You know, that Vulcan salute is not easy as it looks. I don’t know if my fingers are less flexible than most people’s but I find it hard to keep the little finger close to the fourth one while keeping the two of them separate from the other two.
Of course there’s a correlation. Higher intelligence and higher education also correlate with liberalism, and sci-fi geekery correlates with all of the above.
Most sci-fi is liberal, as well -- especially Star Trek, which is basically set in a liberal paradise of the future.
I don’t think there is necessarily a left-right correlation with pro-science, but the current state of the Republican party is so severely anti-science that one need not appeal to a general historical trend.
Some how it’s easy for me. Live long and prosper.
This may be one of those genetic things, like the ability to curl up one’s tongue around the long axis, which I also cannot do.