For “Star Wars” fans, May 4th is a fun, unofficial holiday of sorts, predicated on a pun: “May the Fourth be with you.” Some get the joke better than others.
The unannounced Republican presidential candidate included an image — Yoda on one side, Walker in silhouette on the other — with familiar dialog from the franchise. “That boy was our last hope…. No, there is another.” The image includes the governor’s name in the classic “Star Wars” font.
To be sure, it’s just a fun little message intended to take advantage of an Internet meme, and there’s no reason to take it too seriously. But if we were going to get a little nerdy — OK, more than a little — Walker’s message was a little flawed, at least as far as “Star Wars” canon is concerned.
“That boy was our last hope” referred to Luke Skywalker, who — spoiler alert — was the triumphant hero of the franchise. In Walker’s message, “that boy” refers to someone — I guess President Obama? — but that’s not quite the message the Republican candidate is supposed to make here.
Indeed, “There is another” refers to Leia, who gets to go to a nice party with some Ewoks. In the analogy, Walker is apparently supposed to be Leia, with nascent, untrained force abilities? NARAL picked up on this, too, having a little fun at Walker’s expense.
If it makes the governor feel any better, Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) “May the Fourth” message wasn’t much better. The Kentucky Republican tweeted a message that read, “May the Fourth (Amendment) Be With You.”
That’s not horrible — the Fourth Amendment protects Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures, an issue the senator claims to take seriously — but trying to make puns out of puns is usually a bad idea. It’s not as if the Constitution has a “Force Amendment.”
For its part, the Obama administration stuck to the science part of science fiction, with the White House re-tweeting a “May the Fourth” message from NASA on Kepler-16b — a planet with a double sunset, just like Tatooine.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."