Geeks Claim Obama As Their Own

President-elect Once Flashed Vulcan "Live Long And Prosper" Sign

(AP)  Get ready for the geek-in-chief.

President-elect Barack Obama used to collect comic books, can't part with his BlackBerry, and once flashed Leonard "Mr. Spock" Nimoy the Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" sign.

That and other evidence has convinced some of Obama's nerdier fans that he'll be the first American president to show distinct signs of geekiness. And that's got them as excited as a Tribble around a Klingon.

Obama is good at "repressing his inner geek, but you can tell it's there," especially when he goes into nuanced explanations of technical matters, said Benjamin Nugent, author of the book "American Nerd: The Story of My People."

"One imagines a terrifying rally of 'Star Trek' people shouting, 'One of us!"' Nugent said, in an interview conducted by e-mail, of course.

Others see only some geek qualities, qualifying the president-elect as merely "nerd-adjacent." After all, he's an athlete and kind of cool, some experts demur. Still, there's enough there for geeks to celebrate.

Psychology professor Larry Welkowitz of Keene State College in New Hampshire hopefully speculated that there's a shift in what's cool and that "smart can be in. Maybe that started with the computer programmers of the '90s. The Bill Gateses of the world are OK."

The Obama transition team would not comment on the president-elect's geek qualities, even when it was suggested those could be positive. And his old college friends give the geek idea a split vote. While Margot Mifflin, now a journalism professor in New York, said she saw no geeky signs in Obama as a freshman at Occidental College in California, Amiekoleh Kimbrew Usafi recalled it differently, despite the lack of technology back in 1979.

"He's a geek because he was smart," Usafi said, noting that Occidental was a geeky school to start with, billing itself as the Yale of the West. "I remember he would be hitting his books. I would see him in the library. ... There were a lot of girls that liked him because he was cute, but he kept his head in the direction he was going in. I would see him studying all the time."

Wired magazine first crowed about Obama the geek, complete with five reasons in its GeekDad blog. A lot depends on definition of geek, which to Wired is more a compliment than insult.

GeekDad contributor Matt Blum, a software engineer in Reston, Va., defines geeks as having high intellects, embracing technology, "getting excited about things in the future especially, particularly fiction," having a science viewpoint and being steeped in the geek culture of science fiction and fantasy.

Geeks know and use references from "Star Trek," "Dungeons and Dragons" and comic books. And, he added, they are nit-picky, unafraid to correct mixed science fiction metaphors, such as confusing Star Trek's Andorians with "Star Wars" Iridonians.

So a quick geek cultural check for Obama:

-Technology. Click that icon. He's the candidate who tried to announce his vice presidential pick by text message and embraced Facebook as a campaign tool. He's seldom seen without a BlackBerry and talks of a chief technology officer for the nation.

-Comic books. As a youngster, Obama collected Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comic books. His Senate Web site used to have a photo of him posing in front of a Superman statue, and in October at New York's Alfred Smith dinner he joked: "I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father Jor-El to save the planet Earth." Jor-El was the father of Superman, born on the planet Krypton.

-"Star Trek," the long-running TV show. According to the actor Leonard Nimoy, who played Mr. Spock in the series, Obama flashed him the split four-fingered Vulcan salute when the two crossed paths last year. In May in Des Moines, Newsweek caught Obama teasing wife Michelle about her belt buckle, saying it was studded with Star Trek-powering dilithium crystals and adding, "Beam me up, Scotty!" As he laughed at his own joke, Michelle Obama rolled her eyes, as geek wives often do.

Yes, geeks have wives. That's one of the things that separates them from nerds and dorks.

"A geek is someone who has the knowledge of the geeky type stuff and has social graces," Blum said. "A nerd is someone who has the knowledge but not the social graces and a dork is someone who has neither."

By that definition Obama is a geek, not a nerd or dork, Blum said. Nerds are the type who live in their parents' basements until they're 45, whereas geeks are more normal, he said.

"I'm a geek because I'm a dad," Blum said. "I managed to find a woman who wished to marry me and have children with me."

Blum said Obama qualifies as the first geek-in-chief because George W. Bush was too much a cheerleader and Bill Clinton too wonky and not technological enough. The other presidents came of age before geek culture did, so don't qualify.

But don't discount John Quincy Adams as a geeky guy who steeped himself in government as a teenager, contends author Nugent (who just by adding that historical reference reinforces his geek expertise).

In some ways, though, experts say Obama is just too cool, too athletic, too normal to wear the geek cape. Obama did use drugs and was a high school athlete, missing out on two prime nerd qualities, Nugent said.

Dan Sarewitz, a professor of science and society at Arizona State University, said calling Obama a geek is unfair both to the president-elect and geeks.

"He's too cool to be a geek; he's a decent basketball player; he knows how to dance; he dresses well," Sarewitz said. "It's too high a standard for geeks to possibly live up to."

All the nerds at home can at least try, though, courtesy of a heavily muscled "beach blanket Obama" action figure for $29.95.

So is Obama a geek?

In the words of Alan Leshner, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which had two past leaders appointed by Obama to high posts: "I hope so."

[tmittelstaed]

Obama isn''t a geek, he''s more a wannabe geek. Besides the things mentioned in the article, geeks actually get their hands dirty doing real stuff. Obama is more of a modern manager type who is smart enough to know that the people in the org who are actually doing real work - touching the customers, touching the computers, answering the phones, etc. - are the ones who really control whether the org sinks or swims, and he is also instinctively knows what to do to make the those people want to do their best for you - which basically is to show that you understand the importance of what they are doing, give them some ego strokes from time to time, but otherwise stay out of their way.
You see this in successful technology companies - the good managers have no clue what their underlings do but instead of micromanaging them, they spend their time shielding them from the politics of the rest of the company.
Obama''s transition is a textbook case of this - Obama is appointing the cream of the crop people then letting them alone to do their stuff, while he himself is concentrating on all the stuff that his people don''t want to do - such as working with the Republicans to hammer out some sort of working relationship for the next 4 years.

[jtrockville-2009]

Ummmm.....
Some geeks may have wives, but some have husbands.

[colonieny]

Am I dreaming or what ??

Spock ! Kirk, there is someone taking control of the ship!


while dozing to season one of Star Treck on netflix instant download, I was sure that Mr. Spock was, you know, that guy, we just elected. His whole calm reassurance, logical , steady, matches the whole *** show in tone, and outlook. And then I read this story.
Perhaps, just perhaps, I am still dreaming. If so, then..
Mc Cain could have been ( or be in another dimension) either 1/2 Klighon and 1/2 human, struggling with just where he fits in,fighting his inner Klignon "take me to Washington now !"- or a just found marooned Star Fleet commander, who is prickly and pooped all at the same time. unnerving the Enterprise by forming a gang of 11 to take over control. Coooooolll

[erb0087]

"I thought Al Gore discovered the internet?"
Posted by BoandCo at 07:47 PM : Dec 25, 2008
===============================

Most people have.

John McCain is still searching for it.

[erb0087]

If Barack Obama is Mr. Spock, what does that make George W. Bush ?

An extra on "Green Acres" ?

[boandco]

I thought Al Gore discovered the internet?

[wl7bzh]

For your information (Southern Republicans) Ivy League is not a base ball or basket ball league that will come to your mind first because you live in the south and "never heard this kind of words before".

Posted by ford555551 at 08:49 AM : Dec 25, 2008

And your grammar is impeccable-is she still living with your grandpa?

Southern Redneck humor used with uppity white folks.

[downsteamjim]

Obama is such a geek that he can name all 57 states.

[wl7bzh]

Obama as a Vulcan?-Well there is a precedent for the President-Tuvok Now if we can just come up with an equivalent for seven of nine.

[hambonehd]

Posted by tootall1014 at 10:01 AM : Dec 25, 2008

Just wait till you realize where all that money really came from...
Good luck is right.!

[hypnotoad72]

Don''t worry, the g a y s won''t. Even if the President-elect gave them the world and more, they''d still find a reason to whine and shout "discrimination, you hate us, waaah!"

[smurfcrusher]

who did this research? The geek and nerd descriptions are inaccurate and totally miss the mark.

[bigsk8fan]

besides geeks, more catholics, jews, hispanics, asians, whites, protestants, people making more than $200K, people making less than $150K, college educated, high shool educated, and many other groups, can claim obama. after all, most of all these groups voted for obama.

[jackp32]

To claim him as one of your own you would have to be an idiot geek.

[shockolit]

Great post, Ford5.. Where did you get that assessment of his IQ? I have an ex-husband about like that. He decided the heat in the house was being wasted going back into the return vents and wanted to put plastic over them. He came home after applying for a job and asked me what a systems analyst is. He had checked it off on the list of jobs for which he was applying. He took a test for a job and had to be invited back to take a test they gave the peeps whose intelligence was too low to score on their regular tests. One of the questions was "Which day is the first day of the week?" He missed that one. It scares me that he was a Republican and could have been President.

[ford555551]

Bush got all Cs in his college degree, he probably got all Ds or Fs but since his dad was the big guy at the government level, the professors upgraded to C. When I heard that his IQ is 86 like average Republicans which is pretty close to mentally retarded person then I realized that his grade can%u2019t be C, must below C. That is the two term president once selected by the Supreme Court and 2nd time by voting machine fraud in Ohio and the mastermind (IT guy) was murdered in a staged plane crush so that nobody will know how all those criminal activities took place. That is the democracy Bush is trying to spread around the Globe. Whether Mr. Obama is Geek or not he went to Columbia University with Scholarship and to Harvard both of them are Ivy League Schools. For your information (Southern Republicans) Ivy League is not a base ball or basket ball league that will come to your mind first because you live in the south and never heard this kind of words before.

[shockolit]

Well, maybe he is a little bit geeky, but I enjoyed more the song about him being Irish.

[Mccarthyaw]

This can not be a real story....Christmas fools perhaps?

[toolmangler-2009]

They could call ''me'' chimpie if they called me "Mr President" first. I would find a fitting response.

[fauxnewscom]

Pat Paulson pretended to remove dog hair from his coat to get pet lover votes. Obama uses the same tricks to win over crowds. Obama is not a geek; however, he could give lessons to Zelig.