When Dumb Obsessions Collide
This was probably inevitable, given that Annie and I spent the first season of Battlestar Galactica referring to Col. Tigh only as "McCain." But the world has caught up to and surpassed our idiocy/genius:



Admittedly, I had Roslin more in mind while watching Hillary Clinton in the primaries--particularly, the sneaking suspicion that Hillary might have been more palatable to me as a leader if I wasn't holding her to a standard both unreasonably high and, um, fictional--than Sarah Palin. But McCain/Tigh at the top of the ticket, and the dark hair, sort of makes it work if you squint.

As for the other side, I'm just glad that I haven't actually misspoken "Obama" for "Adama" aloud, as I have more than once in my head. The show, of course, gives you two flavors of near-soundalike leadership options:





One of the most disquieting and brilliant things about the end of Battlestar's second season was how uncomfortably close the writers positioned Gaius Baltar--the practical, non-religious, science-venerating yet charismatic intellectual juxtaposed with Roslin's uber-faith-based, warlike, ideologue president--to a certain idealized archetype of liberal Democrats. Of course, the viewer knew what Baltar was really about... and that didn't help either.

Even though the narrative of the show has somewhat undermined that by stretching Baltar into so many different shapes since (quisling figurehead of a conquerer regime, captured Saddam Hussein, L. Ron Hubbard type, St. Paul), this version of the character is the one that abides in my head. And maybe would get my vote:



While this is probably the nerdiest thing I've ever put up on this blog, don't think I can't top it: last night a comparison occurred to me between the 2007 NL East champion Phillies as the Battlestar Galactica remake--where you never could see how they might make it because they seemed like such a self-destructive, self-sabotaging mess, but they eventually kind of got it together--and the 2008 division champs as the "Star Trek: the Next Generation" model, where they basically had their shit together all year and merely had to overcome some briefly frightening obstacles (the Borg, the Mets) which ultimately proved to be fatally flawed (the "Sleep" command, a terrible bullpen).

Heh heh. Heh heh.