'The Dowd Conundrum'

I was sitting in my dentist’s office a few weeks ago, and there on the side table was the Star Trek issue of Newsweek with some kid’s hand holding up a model USS Enterprise against the sun.

Now I haven’t opened an issue of Newsweek in years, although I have to admit that Evan Thomas is a valuable – actually, essential – addition to society. He forgets to speak his true mind only among his friends, you see, and that gives us a little insight into what these media elites actually believe. He recently said that Barack Obama looked to him like a god, a man above petty things like “America.”

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It was Evan Thomas who in 2004 admitted that liberal media bias was good for fifteen points at the polls. (That was for John Kerry. If you take away Obama’s 15 points of bias – I suspect is was much more — he would have won Vermont and the District of Columbia and that’s all he would have won – but I digress.)

Anyway, the Newsweek cover showed the outline of the Enterprise – without the nacelle caps. Whoever made the model for the cover forgot to put them on. It was obvious to me from across the room, but then, that’s the kind of accuracy I have come to expect from Newsweek. And I digress yet again.

Inside was a “Star Trek” / Obama administration comparison chart, written by Maureen Dowd. Obama was Spock. Rush Limbaugh was a Klingon commander. Rahm Immanuel – RAHM IMMANUEL! – was Captain Kirk. The Un-American. Bastards.

This got me angry enough to do some poking around. All around the web, we are seeing comparisons of Barack Obama to Mr. Spock. Maureen Dowd, who is without question the dimmest bulb in the burned-out chandelier of the once-glorious New York Times, wrote a piece in the Times comparing Spock to Obama and ended the piece with the line, “Kirk out.”

When I regained consciousness I was in the ambulance.

So here is the result. It examines the terrible danger of putting intellectuals in charge. Not that I think Barack Obama is an intellectual. He, like Larry Fine, simply looks like one standing next to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Joe Biden. But I granted the premise and tried to show why intellectuals are so dangerous and so spectacularly and consistently wrong when they try their hand at politics.

Not my deepest work ever, but it was a blast to make. Two desires in life hold monumental power over me:

1) to wear a custom-fitted gold velour jersey.

2) to work with my friend Maurice LaMarche. He was the voice of The Brain in Pinky and the Brain, plays Morbo, Calculon and Kip on Futurama, and who is the go-to guy for William Shatner impressions. As a matter of fact, he can teach you – yes, YOU! – to Talk Like William Shatner by going here.

So without further ado, here’s “The Dowd Conundrum.” I hope you like watching it as much as I enjoyed making it.