Slashdot Mirror
John Hodgman Asks Obama, "Are You a Nerd?"
Hugh Pickens writes "Watch a video of comedian John Hodgman speak after Barack Obama at the recent Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner in DC and discuss the central question of our age: "how we can heal the great and shameful division that has plagued our nation for so long — the age old conflict between jocks and nerds" and ask Obama: Are you now, or have you ever been, a nerd?"
They go over this in the clip. He's not Jesus Christ, he's the Quizatz Haderach.
The opinons expressed are those of the voices in the author's head and are not necessarily those of the author.
He's Jesus Christ himself. ;-)
Are the two mutually exclusive?
v4sw6PU$hw6ln6pr4F$ck 4/6$ma3+6u7LNS$w2m4l7U$i2e4+7en6a2X h
TFA says Obama would be our (the U.S.'s) "first geek president."
Hello? Anybody out there ever heard of Thomas Jefferson?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I suggest we first define who a nerd is. Otherwise this being slashdot, we'll end up submitting comments about something that is entirely different depending on who is posting.
My submission: I agree with this definition and hope that all of you use it as a bench mark as you post your comments.
In part: "...derogatory connotation or stereotype, that refers to a person who passionately pursues intellectual activities, esoteric knowledge, or other obscure interests..."
Thank you.
Jesus had prodigious beard, an unkempt mane of hair, walked around in sandals in all weather, and saw himself as a man with divine powers who was put on the earth to show people "the way".
Jesus was clearly, clearly, a nerd.
Dude, you're confusing nerds with stoners and homeless guys.
And you, in turn, are confusing stoners & homeless guys as Richard Stallman
(My apologies to RMS ... when the humor is just there, right in front of you ... what can you do?)
Now i know why the price of a barrel of spice is so high
Test me and I will chronicle your pain - The Archivist (Diablo 3)
When did all of this disrespect for the position of our President start?
Dick Nixon?
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
When did all of this disrespect for the position of our President start?
When people tried to make the position a king above normal citizens.
When people start to think of Presidents as Emperors or Popes that are above common man, then they start acting like it.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
if Obamas a nerd were gonna be ok. All we need is a catchy music montage, a wise crackin sidekick (Joe Biden = YES), maybe a panty raid or two, and we can fix the world economy in no time.
Test me and I will chronicle your pain - The Archivist (Diablo 3)
To be fair, Obama has kept the dignity of the office fairly well. This was a press dinner, ie, although it's broadcast in various places, with clips here and there, it's not really a public address. Obama himself was making some pretty roasting jokes (more so at the White House Correspondents dinner), and John was pretty respectful in many ways, talking up Obama's intellect and how he's doing a good-job...
Discipline is most certainly not the key to maintaining authority and respect. He has authority because the US populace gave him it; he maintains respect by respecting the US peope who put him there, and being open and transparent, and not "talking down" to them, acting as though he's some sort of God purely because of his job. In fact Obama has made many self deprecating jokes about how some supporters seem to idolise him but he himself doesn't take it at all seriously.
I'm thinking of the "And on the seventy-third day, I shall rest" joke in particular...
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
Ditto. Also, this message
box is exactly the width of
any line in this message.
Looks like my client-side stylesheet is still correcting for that.
Now, about these various thumb sliders scattered throughout the replies....
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
The Obama Deception is great. It bashes both Bush and Obama. It blew away a lot of conservatives I showed it to.
And a gorgeous one at that
Did President Obama ask if Mr. Hodgman was, or ever had been, a Linux (or Mac) user?
As an initial matter: Fire Samzenpus.
Regardless of whether "nerd" is derogatory, the thing that gives me the most heart about the fact that this question is being asked is that we seem to have gotten over our national obsession with having a president who is "one of us." Whether I agree with his policies, I am delighted that our current president did dramatically better in law school than I did, at a somewhat better law school that the one I went to. He engages intellectually with at least some of the issues he faces.
The POTUS doesn't have power to do much of anything. The position has gained un-Constitutional power President after President. All the Presidents after George Washington have disrespected the position of our President.
So basically our President shouldn't communicate with us. Or maybe, President TV? With official looking logos and red or blue backgrounds that respect the position. I joke but that actually sounds kind of cool.
Obama is a lawyer and a politician.
If the internet nerds are so needy and desperate for a role model in politics, they should try to elect a scientist or engineer. Even an MD would be a better nerd than a lawyer.
Where have you been? This has been going on at least since the televised Kennedy/Nixon debate.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
Discipline is needed to keep respect and authority.
I know someone who would agree!
Nurse Diesel: I know you better than you know yourself.
You live for bondage and discipline.
Dr. Montague: Too much bondage. Not enough discipline!
Diesel: You want discipline? I'll give you discipline.
Montague: Yes! Yes. I'm sorry! Yes! It feels so good!
I take it you're more of a Dr. Montague to our President Diesel?
The enemies of Democracy are
John Wilkes Booth and his use of both a .44 Derringer and the phrase "Sic semper tyrannis" seems rather disrespectful.
The press made a big deal about his basketball playing ability during the campaign, therefore he is disqualified as a nerd. He is the diametric opposite of a nerd, he is a jock.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
That's the best solution.
Anyone know how to get rid of those? They are driving me nuts in firefox.
Mod this up. Bigby's trolling in the classical sense, and he is correct to a degree (IMHO), although I'll disagree with starting after George Washington.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Just in the past week, I've seen, pitched as front-page news, that Barack Obama KILLED A FLY and had FROZEN CUSTARD with his kids. A couple of weeks ago, it was similarly reported that he HAD A HAMBURGER. Corn can't be too far behind. Apparently nothing about the Dear Leader is so trivial that the media drones will not wet themselves with delight and dutifully report it.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Don't be an ass. He's a jock of the "team captain" type.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
"If you don't want to work, become a reporter. That awful power, the public opinion of the nation, was created by a horde of self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditch digging and shoemaking and fetched up journalism on their way to the poorhouse."
Mark Twain 1881
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Third Answer is Pre-Spice Mass
Isn't it the Water of Life (specifically the seed; the unchanged water, before a Reverend Mother has transformed it)? A pre-spice mass occurs naturally in the desert, not as the result of drowning the maker and eventually becomes a spice blow. If you add the Water of Life to a pre-spice mass then you begin a chain reaction that destroys the sandworms' ecosystem.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
He's not. A nerd never never NEVER spoken a bad word about videogames.
... and the article misquoted John Hodgeman.
The article stated:
"also the first geek President"
Sorry to split definitions but we have to agree on the definition of nerd and geek. I don't consider them quite the same. I consider TJ a nerd but not a geek.
Secondly to quote John Hodgeman directly:
"He could be the first nerd president of the modern era."
I don't consider Obama a geek, but he has many nerd qualities, so I would agree with this.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
How is this off-topic?
Clearly the Mods didn't watch the video.
I graduated High School in 07, and you old men make me laugh. There's not much difference between the Jocks and the Nerds anymore, now the Jocks are tools and the Nerds are just losers.
Until college no one has school pride.
Thank the 90's.
Has the old saint in his forest not yet heard of it? That God is dead?
Actually it started even sooner. If I am not mistaken the first Congress didn't take the to kindly to George Washington. Of course they were not nearly as hostile.
.
.
that is all.
The "Sedition" part of the "Alien and Sedition Acts", which were passed by Congress and signed by John Adams, were blatantly unconstitutional. It made it illegal to criticize the government.
Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Purchase??
Defying the contract between the people and Federal government is what degrades the respect for the POTUS position. And that is right in line with this thread and not trolling.
They can't be identified with the CSSViewer plug-in. I also get a notice that a plug-in is needed for idle from NoScript. Also, the zooicons aren't working across all of slashdot; I'm getting text alternatives here. I added the rule .zooicon:before { content: attr(class) " "; } just to get an idea about what's going on with that.
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060214 Firefox/3.0.11
Running on some version of Ubuntu but displaying on a Redhat 9 box, and getting "Pango-WARNING **: libthai.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory" all the time.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Obama is far from being anything resembling a nerd. Positions of power, particularly the presidencies, have been filled by people about as non-nerd as you get. The people here saying Obama is a nerd are like most of Obama supporters--projecting their own identity or hopes and dreams into them because they like the man and want him to be like them. If you've seen some of the almost spooky Obama worship going on, this will not at all surprise you.
I don't think he's a nerd, since he never worked for the Willy Wonka Candy Company, and isn't covered in sugar.
fuck-the-skull-of-jesus (the best satire site on the internet; updated once every 4 years or so) had the final word on this in 2002.
http://fuck-the-skull-of-jesus.mit.edu/osamajesus.html
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
You should probably WTFV (Watch the Fucking Video.) :)
Hodgeman makes this point pretty clear... The last administration wasn't an athletic bunch, but they did have that Jock attitude.
Obama is in good shape and plays sports, but really does seem more like the nerd type.
there was a kotaku post about it. http://kotaku.com/5080161/obama-on-all-your-base-are-belong-to-us-bwah
I just thought "WTF?" when I saw the fly killing on the news and heard the discussion about whether he should have or should not have killed that fly, the whole decision process, etc.
I don't know what is more pathetic, people who get upset about a dead fly, or people who think anybody should cater to people who get upset about dead flies.
I was pretty upset about Obama giving out region 1 box DVD sets to foreign dignitaries, or an iPod to the Queen of England. Obama seriously needs more coaching on this sort of thing, he's emberrassing us!
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
I have not laughed so hard at anything on TV in a long, long time.
John Hodgman is now officially my hero. The extended Dune references were just brilliant. I'm gonna go hug my PC now.
BTW, who here was able to answer the Dune quiz off the top of your head? I did. :D
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
A nerd by definition doesn't do very well socially, since their time is taken up with learning the latest technologies or sciences rather than learning the social interactions that a politician would need to survive.
Confidence is being able to do something and doing it. One can have humility and confidence. The guy in the back of the room who says "I think I can fix your server" and after much discussion, does it, is confident, but humble. The guy who walks up and says "I got your server fix right here!" but has no idea WTF he's doing, fails at it, but blames someone else is arrogant and confident (he probably really believes this). The main difference being competent.
Obama's made a career out of refusing to take a definitive position (see Iran, government run healthcare: he refuses to say he won't sign a bill without a gov't option) until all facts are in, but as a consensus evolves, he's ready to champion the consensus and try and convince or trample over any naysayers. Contrast this with Bush who took a position immediately (e.g. axis of evil) and then defend or refute it even after he's proven wrong (WMD in Iraq).
I think nerds are generally technocratic and fact-based, but are willing to champion the solution against naysayers which the experts (e.g. Bernanke (Fed Chair), Krugman (this year's Nobel Laureate in econ), Summers (Harvard pres) w.r.t economic stimulus) agree on. It's a far cry from making policy and let the experts decide the details.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Now if only people would stop mispronouncing that. It's "Kwisatz" like in the video, but then they pronounce "hadurak" when it should be "HaDERach", where the "ach" is pronounced as though in Hebrew, Arabic, or German. It's a guttural "h" rather than a "k".
Thomas Jefferson was a bit nerdy, true, but he was disqualified from being the first nerd president because it's a well-known fact that he ran his own fantasy football league. And we all know that fantasy football is the territory of jocks, not nerds.
It may be true that in the modern day fantasy football is the domain of jocks, but back in Jefferson's time it was the equivalent of video games or RPGs.
Knowledge != Intelligence
Does that mean Osama Bin Laden is a nerd too?
Here is a deep link to the part of the video where Hodgman actually starts talking about Obama being a nerd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW7OPByRGDY#t=7m56s
Naa, if her DVD player's so old that it can't read multiple regions, it's probably stuck on region 1, like mine is. Getting region 1 DVDs is a bonus!
The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
A first class comedian can take the piss out of anyone.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.