I’ve long been amused, bemused, and occasionally confused by how seriously some people take fictional characters. While I care about diversity in real life, I don’t care who plays James Bond, Captain America or Doctor Who. They’re not real people, they’re fictional characters. Diversity involving fictional characters is, well, fictional.

The most ridiculous recent manifestation of this trend comes from Jack Butler at The National Review. The title of this column says it all:  Stacey Abrams Does Not Deserve To Be President of Earth.

Silly-billy Butler is referring to Stacey Abrams’ appearance on the season finale of Star Trek: Discovery. I thought the casting in the cameo role was mildly amusing since I knew that Abrams is a Trekkie or Trekker, whichever label you prefer. I was more focused on the deus ex machina resurrection of Booker, which diminished my enjoyment of the finale. At least his cat Grudge will still have him around:

Butler is not the only wingnut to babble breathlessly about Abrams playing the “president of earth.” There’s no such office. We’re unlikely to ever have world government and if we did Boris Johnson would want out. He’s even compared the Russia-Ukraine war to Brexit:

And I know that it’s the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples. When the British people voted for Brexit, in such large, large numbers, I don’t believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners. It’s because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself.”

That’s actually sillier than outrage over a fictional character. There are times, however, that Boris acts like a pantomime horse’s ass.

Back to Star Trek, which is the only Sci-Fi franchise I care about. Why do I care? Because of the humanitarian and liberal outlook expressed by its characters. Captain Kirk may have been a hound, but he was a do-gooder hound along the lines of Jack Kennedy, not a wingnut pussy grabber along the lines of Donald Trump.

From its earliest incarnation to Discovery and Picard, Star Trek has been liberal in thought and deed. That’s why Stacey Abrams’ cameo made sense but frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. It’s a fictional character, y’all, it’s a fictional character.

The last word goes to Utopia: