Bear Witness

Star Trek is enough reason for justifying the Supreme Court decision today, according to once VP nominee Sarah Palin.  Poised to become the new captain of the USS Steadfast (in UPN and Fox’s new Star Trek Series–see past entries here and here), Palin gave a speech today where she cited as precedent the popular science fiction series, aired between 1966-1969.  “Sidearms protected everyone.  Everyone had a phaser.  This is the future.  So, we thank the judges for remembering not only where we’ve been but where we’re heading,” she said today outside her Alaska home.  She showed the crowd her own handgun, which she claims has stopped fourteen robberies, six alone by her next door neighbor, writer Joe McGinniss.

Palin excited the gun rights lobby (which is near frothing already for Palin) by endorsing the Supreme Court decision and by linking it to popular culture.  Seventeen unidentified men and women held up their iPhone 4s after having googled “shooting death” to show how many gun death entries are in the news for just today, June 28th.   “Those really effective background checks keep guns out of the hands of crazy people!” one of them shouted at Palin’s abrupt press conference.  [The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, an advocate for sensible gun laws, cite more than 100,000 people a year are the victims of a shooting]

Palin countered, “If it’s good enough for Star Trek, it’s good enough for the country that will be Star Trek one day.  After all, these are Americans in space.”

Bloggers have tried to explain the Federation of Planets to Ms. Palin (as she’s about to become a captain on the new series).   She twitters politely, “All captains of the series were American, everyone spoke English, and the military was in charge of ‘exploration.’  This makes it an American ship in space.  How much more American can you get than U.S.S.?”

The writers, once thrilled at writing the conservative adventures of rogue captains, were shocked at Ms. Palin’s link-up between Roddenberry’s vision of peace and her own gun-toting agenda.  “She’s obviously not familiar with the ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’ alternate timeline.  Sidearms on the bridge crew were a sign that things had gone bad—not good.”

Palin is certainly a rogue Trek actor for the writers.  She has cajoled the writers into scripting outright sedition on the bridge.  “This is how real, honest people would talk if their President was a weak-kneed, educated liberal facing this kind of disaster.”  She refers to the Reckoning–that portentious, ominous, apocalyptic thing hurtling towards Earth–that is the tension backbone of the new series, Star Trek: Reckoning.

Writers have committed to one season.  My inside man in this writing group says, “I don’t think the fans could sustain the series past one season.  Just seeing how a conservative rogue group would f**k up the whole Federation would make them cry out for the Reckoning just to clean house.”

Another writer says, “We’re treating it as comedy.  And the best thing is that Sarah [Palin] is taking it dead seriously.”

The team of producers and the director, Chris Berman, want it that way.  “I think Palin, Gingrich, Cheney, Limbaugh–they’ll be able to pull it off because they believe in their beliefs so much.  It won’t even have to be acting.  And yeah, I agree with the sentiment of the writers— fans will be torn between which is worse for the Federation–conservatives or a giant meteor, wave, whatever coming to wipe out human civilization.  Both alternatives wipe out civilization.  It’s really the lady or the tiger, isn’t it?”

About the Trek reference in today’s speech, Berman says, “Any reference to Trek in popular culture helps the show.  When we air this series, Palin and the others will have done a huge favor to us by just being themselves and by mentioning the series.  We’re trying to give them as much creative control in this as possible.  Since we know nothing about what conservatives would actually DO with a starship, we’re learning from them how to go about creating these characters.  We’re looking at this as a cultural and creative exchange.”

He added, “Nothing is more alien to us than the Tea Party.”

Note: all content is intended as parody.  That said, Star Trek: Reckoning would be very interesting indeed.  References to Joe McGinniss in no way implies he is guilty of robbery, only implying that Sarah Palin would think he was.  

For NY Times editorial on how wrong the courts were.