The Onion Opposes Obama Because of the Movie Deep Impact

Posted by Alan Childress

A friend sent me an email linking this opinion piece in The Onion:  Do We Really Want Another Black President After the Events of Deep Impact?  Sound logic and all, here is the beginning of the argument:  the author is

…unwilling to stand idly by while our nation allows itself to be completely annihilated by another incoming comet.  Have we learned nothing from the tragic events of 1998, when, under the watch of President Morgan Freeman, this nation was plunged into chaos, and hundreds of millions of people died at the hands of the deadly Wolf-Beiderman space rock?

Comparisons to other such presidents, including David Palmer in 24, and “the huge black guy from the The Fifth Element,” fare no better.  On Palmer’s watch, for example, terrorists struggled no less than four nuclear bombs into the U.S.

My reponse to the author is that the choice is not made in a vacuum.  The alternative is unthinkable.  Geena Davis in Commander in Chief became a simpering mess when her teenaged daughter had a crisis of dating confidence, and Geena had to cancel a security meeting with the Joint Chiefs.  And don’t get me started with her indecisive method of choosing a White House chief of staff — my husband or the black guy, the black guy or my husband?  What’s a girl to do?  She then chooses Harry Lennix, so we are back to where we started:  an African American man is essentially running the country anyway.  Incoming comet anyway.  Even if she had picked the husband to be her chief of staff, hey Bill is no picnic either.

Or we can go the route of Glenn Close as VP Bennett in Air Force One.  Admittedly she was only the Vice President, or at most the President in charge only by arguable means of some arcane constitutional amendment…and only because of terrorists taking hostage the real leader Harrison Ford.  But even in that small window of opportunity when she was in charge, every camera shot of her saw a flustered and babbling woman taking orders from Dean Stockwell, who seemed totally out of place without being able to punch on a calculator to figure out where Sam would quantum leap next.  That is one disaster we can do without. 

A vote for Obama is a vote for hope — for hope that Geena Davis will stay a quirky dog trainer, that Glenn Close can continue to flip the lamp on an off, stalking Michael Douglas.  Anything else is just a platitude.