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Posts published in “Day: January 13, 2007”

Sci-fi speeches

This week the U.S. House saw two speeches by members of the Northwest delegation that resulted in widely differing reactions: One was praised as a brilliant star-making event, the other as the ramblings of an idiot. The assessments were wrong.

David Wu
David Wu

The cries of lunacy were aimed at Oregon Representative David Wu, who was speaking about Iraq and taking a strongly anti-war tone. The core of the criticism is that, in the process, Wu made reference to Star Trek, and to Vulcans and Klingons.

The satiric site Wonkette headlines "Captain Nerd Visits Bridge of USS House of Representatives," and leads with "Here’s Rep. David Wu (D-Dorkville) bringing up the Vulcan-Klingon sectarian divide we’ve long feared."

The Oregonian headlines "Where no congressman has gone before," and leads, "If David Wu tires of the congressman gig, he might have a second career lecturing at Star Trek conventions."

So you can imagine what the right is saying (Rush Limbaugh's "idiot Democrat," for a start.)

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