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Which US President Would You Like to See in "The Savage Curtain"?

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I would hope that the sheer number of people Roosevelt helped get killed in the course of constructing the Panama Canal and conquering and oppressing Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, would prompt Kirk to rule out Teddy Roosevelt as a role model.

I have trouble seeing Kirk as truly admiring any U.S. president up through Nixon other than Lincoln and FDR, and I think even then he would acknowledge they both have some major dark sides.
At the time TOS was being produced, was Roosevelt generally recognized for those things? Or would a TV show depicting him in 1968 have just shown him in a positive light similar to how Lincoln was portrayed?

Kor
 
At the time TOS was being produced, was Roosevelt generally recognized for those things? Or would a TV show depicting him in 1968 have just shown him in a positive light similar to how Lincoln was portrayed?

Kor

I dunno. Roddenberry and co. were more progressive in their depictions of race and sensitivity towards non-white cultures than most of their contemporaries, but I don't know if they would have had the sensitivity to recognize the insane amount of needless death Teddy Roosevelt inflicted upon Latin America and the Philippines.

But I would certainly not interpret James T. Kirk as admiring him.
 
I would hope that the sheer number of people Roosevelt helped get killed in the course of constructing the Panama Canal and conquering and oppressing Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, would prompt Kirk to rule out Teddy Roosevelt as a role model.

I have trouble seeing Kirk as truly admiring any U.S. president up through Nixon other than Lincoln and FDR, and I think even then he would acknowledge they both have some major dark sides.
I dunno. Roddenberry and co. were more progressive in their depictions of race and sensitivity towards non-white cultures than most of their contemporaries, but I don't know if they would have had the sensitivity to recognize the insane amount of needless death Teddy Roosevelt inflicted upon Latin America and the Philippines.

But I would certainly not interpret James T. Kirk as admiring him.

So after both Bonz and I said to knock it off with the overtly political stuff, you make these posts? Seriously?

I understand how easily this topic can drift but all of you know this is not the forum for dissecting political careers. This is the last warning to everyone, or we’ll have to close this thread.
 
Before this thread gets closed, I would like to add my 2 cents' worth: when George W. Bush was President, I used to ponder how funny it would have been if the Excalbians had misread Kirk's thoughts and summoned Bush fils by mistake. In all seriousness, I imagine Kirk would also have admired JFK.
 
So after both Bonz and I said to knock it off with the overtly political stuff, you make these posts? Seriously?

I understand how easily this topic can drift but all of you know this is not the forum for dissecting political careers. This is the last warning to everyone, or we’ll have to close this thread.

This is not an attempt to argue with you, but it is an attempt at clarification: Neither you nor T'Bonz said not to discuss things overtly political. Instead, you both just said "knock it off" to a discussion about the Nazis. I took that to mean, "Shut up about Nazis," not, "Shut up about politics." I do apologize for that misunderstanding.

I will however say that I am at a loss as to how to discuss what presidents Kirk might admire without discussing overt politics, so I'll bow out of this thread at this point.

ETA:

In looking back over, I see that I missed this post. Apologies.
 
President Ford shows up.

"I'm Gerald Ford, President of the United States. It's a pleasure to meet..."

[*Trips over rock on Excalbia*]

"Sorry about that, Captain. I played football in my youth but got clumsy as I got older."

After my brother and I watched 2000's BATTLE ROYALE, he and I entertained ourselves by adapting the concept with Marvel's Avengers, HILL STREET BLUES and GODFATHER characters, rock stars, film action stars and, last year, presidents and politicians. All 45 American Presidents were contained in the 100. None of them made it to the final two, though Gerald Ford took out five accidentally and identically with a running gag. Every time he tripped, he discharged his weapon. His victims: Polk, Taylor, Garfield, Benjy Harrison and finally Ford himself. (Barbara Bush won a vicious TOTAL RECALL-style fight against a woman from her own party before Ben Franklin took her out.)
 
This thread got weird fast …

It’s truly hard to view all presidents, in fact any historical figure, out of a larger context of their time. None were saints. But, in their behavior is a function and reflection on their era.

For instance:
- Jefferson is known as one of the great thinkers ..but didn’t he own slaves and had children with one of them ?
- FDR signed executive order 1066 imprisoning American citizens of Japanese ancestry.

we could go on.

Easier to find bad guys in history. It’s replete with them.

And it’s not like you can add religious figures on the side of good. Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha etc etc all were pacifists. That would be a short skirmish with bad guys. (And Islam doesn’t allow the profit Mohammed to be shown , so can’t have him either)

why does this suddenly remind me of that red dwarf episode where Rimmer was controlling all those wax droids?
 
This thread got weird fast …

It’s truly hard to view all presidents, in fact any historical figure, out of a larger context of their time. None were saints. But, in their behavior is a function and reflection on their era.

For instance:
- Jefferson is known as one of the great thinkers ..but didn’t he own slaves and had children with one of them ?
- FDR signed executive order 1066 imprisoning American citizens of Japanese ancestry.

we could go on.

Easier to find bad guys in history. It’s replete with them.

And it’s not like you can add religious figures on the side of good. Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha etc etc all were pacifists. That would be a short skirmish with bad guys. (And Islam doesn’t allow the profit Mohammed to be shown , so can’t have him either)

why does this suddenly remind me of that red dwarf episode where Rimmer was controlling all those wax droids?

Even Jesus had his moment of violence. Didn't he whip the money changers out of the temple?
 
And Woodrow Wilson - for decades a progressive hero who championed both a federal income tax and a popularly-elected Senate - was a virulent white supremacist who lauded The Birth of a Nation in 1915 as a glorious and historically accurate representation of Southern history.
 
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