How Gene Roddenberry wrote a President

Star Trek, with its multi-faceted multimedia empire, is an iconic part of Americana.  It is a uniquely American experiment, a projection of American idealism and utopianism into the blank canvass that is the future where dreams and follies can be realized in their fullest with even the slightest of negative consequences can be swept aside or solved in 22 minutes.  It is a future where a socialist, peaceful Federation doesn't even field a single ship devoted to purely military ends until decades after its founding, and the most militant governments eventually succumb to their own flaws and greed within a season or four.  While the original television program started in the 1960s, it has continued on to this very day and some of the recent series have succeeded in grabbing the imagination of a new generation of would-be Trekkies.  One of these series, Voyager, was especially interesting to me.

In the series, the USS Voyager is catapulted across the Milky Way galaxy into unmapped sections that no human has ever seen or travelled.  The lone ship completes a harrowing voyage across the Delta Quadrant and eventually makes it back to Earth through some phoney-baloney physics crap.  The show was like Sideways, you either hated it or loved it.  No matter which side you stood on, you had to give Voyager praise for one character: Seven of Nine.

Oh yeah.  Seven of Nine.  The former Borg bitch who turned into the hottie that James Cameron only wishes the Terminatrix in T3 could have been.  Those catsuits are a testament to women everywhere, at least the really hot blonde ones.  In addition, Seven of Nine was an intelligent, strong-willed, independent woman who saved the USS Voyager time and time again.  She also, from time to time, seemed to have a budding lesbian relationship with Voyager's Captain Janeway.  In short, she was a revolutionary character for the Star Trek series.

The woman who played Seven of Nine was Jerri Ryan, a woman who also made a name for herself on the Fox series Boston Public.  She is an absolutely gorgeous woman, and her love for gourmet cooking and cuisine has led her to become somewhat of a surprise guest chef in many high-end restaurants around the world.  During the time she was acting on Voyager and Boston Public, she married to Jack Ryan, who would eventually become a GOP Senator from Illinois.  Jerri Ryan eventually filed for divorce from her husband, then-Senator.  She alleged that she had been forced to commit sexual acts in several clubs around the world at his insistence, including one where whips, chains, and clubs dangled from the ceiling (Think Matrix: Revolutions).  

As a result of the scandal, Jack Ryan announced he would immediately cease his re-election campaign for the open seat in the Senate.  In a hurry to try and fill the opening, the GOP flew in Alan Keyes to try and create a credible candidate to face off against the then-unknown representative from the Illinois state legislature.  Alan Keyes, already being one of God's greatest jokes, lost the election miserably to Barack Hussein Obama.

So, in short, Star Trek is responsible for the rise of the 44th President of the United States of America.  

Hell, all Star Wars can claim is to be a six-part anti-Nixon rant.