Carol Moseley Braun, Geek?

It had to happen, there wasn’t any other way. Within 12 hours of announcing to me (and possibly the rest of the country) that she was a geek, Carol Moseley Braun dropped out of the presidential race. It seems fitting that the geekiest candidate since Diamond Joe Quimby said “Welcome futurists, cyberphiles, and the rest of you dateless wonders” would drop out of the nation’s second most important popularity contest (behind American Idol) after showing her true self to us.
It wasn’t a race or a gender thing, it was a nerd thing. People might point to Dean and say that he’s a geek. He does have Larry Lessig and other neterati behind him. That’s nothing compared to Braun’s stunning admission last night.
What’s that? You didn’t hear about it? Obviously the jock controlled media is keeping the nerd message out of the papers. But the Daily Show, which had Braun on as a guest, was bold enough to air her interview. During the interview she said “Live long and prosper,” which is hardly conclusive of nerdhood. It’s a phrase available to anyone who’s turned on their TV in the last 20 years. What really showed her true nerdity was when she said “Fear is the mind killer,” a Dune reference, in response to Bush’s War on Terror™.
It’s only fitting that the first publicly proclaimed nerd resign from the presidential race so soon after outing herself. Now she can go back to the Senate, where she can help set up the A/V equipment, help the other senators with their homework and do everything in her power to keep her lunch money. Still, it would have been nice to get a presidential decree to digitally remove Jar Jar…