Quote of the day--he has a bad feeling about this edition
If you don't vote for Barack Obama, you're insane. 'Cause without him I think the middle class will completely disappear. And you look at Romney, and I'm sure he's a nice guy, but I think he's like the Thing. He only imitates human behavior. He's not actually human himself.
Okay, confession: I don't give a rat's ass about who a celebrity is endorsing for political office. I just love that Hamill is comparing Mitt Romney to the title character from a John Carpenter movie based on a SF/horror classic.
I mean, at this point so many people have compared Mitt Romney to a robot--myself, included--that it might be becoming kind of a cliché. Props to Hamill--Luke Skywalker and the best Joker before Heath Ledger knocked one out of the park in his last role--to reach back for the solid science fiction reference to a polymorphous human-imitating bug-eyed-monster.
And it's a perfect comparison. The Thing poses as whichever person seems to be best-placed to advance its inhuman agenda--much like a certain politician who has bounced all over the political map on issues like health-care and abortion, depending on whether he wanted to be Governor of Massachusetts or right-wing Presidential candidate. The Thing is passive until challenged, whereupon it morphs into a hideous, aggressive creature--not unlike an unflappable candidate who has burst into public rages directed at importune journalists and political rivals onstage in live debates.
Oh. And they both have issues with dogs.
I think it can only make the metaphor sweeter that John Carpenter, who directed The Thing, and John W. Campbell, who wrote the story the movie was based on, are/were notoriously conservative. That's probably not wholly fair: I think both men come from a much more libertarian style of conservativism than whatever Mitt Romney is trying to stand for this week. Still. I find it amusing.
Anyway, I think I stand corrected by a superior geek, which is always humbling. I think I've been saying someone needs to give Romney a Voight-Kampff test. But that could be dead wrong, a dangerous mistake.
We need a hot needle and a blood sample.
I mean, at this point so many people have compared Mitt Romney to a robot--myself, included--that it might be becoming kind of a cliché. Props to Hamill--Luke Skywalker and the best Joker before Heath Ledger knocked one out of the park in his last role--to reach back for the solid science fiction reference to a polymorphous human-imitating bug-eyed-monster.
And it's a perfect comparison. The Thing poses as whichever person seems to be best-placed to advance its inhuman agenda--much like a certain politician who has bounced all over the political map on issues like health-care and abortion, depending on whether he wanted to be Governor of Massachusetts or right-wing Presidential candidate. The Thing is passive until challenged, whereupon it morphs into a hideous, aggressive creature--not unlike an unflappable candidate who has burst into public rages directed at importune journalists and political rivals onstage in live debates.
Oh. And they both have issues with dogs.
I think it can only make the metaphor sweeter that John Carpenter, who directed The Thing, and John W. Campbell, who wrote the story the movie was based on, are/were notoriously conservative. That's probably not wholly fair: I think both men come from a much more libertarian style of conservativism than whatever Mitt Romney is trying to stand for this week. Still. I find it amusing.
Anyway, I think I stand corrected by a superior geek, which is always humbling. I think I've been saying someone needs to give Romney a Voight-Kampff test. But that could be dead wrong, a dangerous mistake.
We need a hot needle and a blood sample.
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