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The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack Obama

Good Will Riker

Good Will Riker

Admiral
As some of us here may already know (I would have said "most of us" if I was talking about TWOK, but this being TFF, I say only "some of us" who decided to purchase the DVD.) in the deleted scene section of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier - Special Collector's Edition DVD there is an extended scene of Hikaru Sulu and Pavel Chekov hiking in the woods when the camera pans up and we see the familiar faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln carved on Mt. Rushmore. Then, we pan left and there is another prominent face of an African American female president.

Could this fictional-future president of the United States who would have served as chief executive anywhere between 2017-2287 could have possibly been influenced as a young child by United States President Barack Obama to one day aspire for higher office and bring about great change to our great nation?

To think that a possible (fictional) United States president will achieve an illustriousness greater than that of even Franklin D. Roosevelt to hold such a monumental and iconic position on top of Mt. Rushmore says a lot about said character and would be so incredible to believe that it may have infact possibly been Barack Obama who blazed the trail for her to be able to get there. :cool:

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Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

Someone with good photoshop skills should take a nice hi-res picture of Mount Rushmore and edit Barrack Obamas face in. Please. Id do it but I dont know how...
 
Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

^^^

Now we know how an African American candidate for a major party for the presidency of the United States can get elected to higher office -- instead of just having a bunch of patronizing Hollywood studio executives patting themselves on their backs with Deep Impact, Head of State, and TV's "24" -- and bring about real change to a great country of ours.

Now, in regards to the fictional 5th president on the face of Mt. Rushmore in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, how did she bring about greatness that would surpass even FDR in helping the United States come out of the Great Depression and become the global superpower that we as a nation are known for today? Did she help bring an end to this economic mess created by George W. Bush? Did she find a way to put an end to global warming? Did she help usher in a new era of world peace after the post-atomic horrors of Star Trek: First Contact, Q's fantasy in "Encounter at Farpoint," and Khan Noonien Singh?

Seriously, her being an African American United States president is not enough, because Barack Obama already claimed that mantle. If we had to put it in real world terms, how would she have come about that greatness which would allow her to claim that illustrious iconic spot on the face of Mt. Rushmore?
 
Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

Firstly, my understanding of the geology of Mt. Rushmore is that you can't put another face there; the granite it too porous. :)

Secondly, Star Trek's past isn't exactly our present. While I think there is an episode of Enterprise that established that George W. Bush was an American president, there's no reason that he had to serve two terms, that he led the United States into a war of choice, etc. Likewise, it's not necessarily true that Barack Obama ran for President in the Star Trek universe or was elected such.

However, we're talking about a fictional construct, not reality, in discussing the fifth face on Mt. Rushmore. :)

I don't know that the fifth face was inspired by Barack Obama, but I suppose she could have been to the extent that any president wants to follow in the footsteps of their illustrious predecessors. I don't know how the faces on Mt. Rushmore were intended to be interpreted, but I see Washington as the "father of the nation," Jefferson as the embodiment of American liberties as writer of the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln as the president who guided the nation through the Civil War, and Teddy Roosevelt as the president who turned the United States into one of the Great Powers and set the nation on its path into the 20th century.

I would think that a fifth face on Mt. Rushmore would have to be as transformational as that. Probably the president who brought the United States and the world back together after World War III and was at the forefront of diplomacy with the Vulcans.

That's my guess. :)
 
Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

Allyn Gibson said:
Secondly, Star Trek's past isn't exactly our present. While I think there is an episode of Enterprise that established that George W. Bush was an American president, there's no reason that he had to serve two terms, that he led the United States into a war of choice, etc. Likewise, it's not necessarily true that Barack Obama ran for President in the Star Trek universe or was elected such.
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If Futurama can update their roster of famous historical figures/today's pop cultural personalities everytime they release a new DVD/broadcast a new episode, we certainly can. :cool:

I mean Lucy Liu featured in an episode of Futurama set in the year 3000+, but not Barack Obama...I mean, c'mon! :vulcan:
 
Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

And that episode of Futurama was aired back in 2001 when Barack Obama was a no-name Illinois state senator.

Kinda like how Star Trek V was released in 1989, back when Obama was still a student at Harvard Law School.

I'm not really seeing the point here.
 
Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

cardinal biggles said:
And that episode of Futurama was aired back in 2001 when Barack Obama was a no-name Illinois state senator.

Kinda like how Star Trek V was released in 1989, back when Obama was still a student at Harvard Law School.

I'm not really seeing the point here.
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The fact of the matter is we now know "how" a black American can be elected to the presidency of the United States, but the next step is to realize how a president who happens to be a black American can achieve greatness as the president of the United States as evidence by the black American female president on the face of Mt. Rushmore.

The image of the black American president on Mt. Rushmore signified that the majority of America overcame its own racism in electing a non-white into the US presidency, but that said image doesn't quite fill in the gap of how a US president who happens to be black American could have achieved greatness that would have merited her face being on Mt. Rushmore ahead of historical presidential greats such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt who pulled the United States out of the Great Depression.
 
Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

It'd be a bit odd for that STV prez to be inspired by Obama, given that Obama is himself a Trekkie. Gets kinda recursive.
 
Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

Christopher said:
It'd be a bit odd for that STV prez to be inspired by Obama, given that Obama is himself a Trekkie. Gets kinda recursive.
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Christopher,

Hypothetically speaking, as a writer, if you were to write about this fictional Star Trek V's historical United States president into one of your novels, how would you convince and justify to the readers that she achieved a level of prominence and greatness in United States history to even surpass Franklin D. Roosevelt in attaining an inconic spot on Mt. Rushmore?
 
Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

Good Will Riker said:
Christopher,

Hypothetically speaking, as a writer, if you were to write about this fictional Star Trek V's historical United States president into one of your novels, how would you convince and justify to the readers that she achieved a level of prominence and greatness in United States history to even surpass Franklin D. Roosevelt in attaining an inconic spot on Mt. Rushmore?
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Well, I wouldn't want to give that away in advance. ;) I will say that there's no objective standard for deciding who gets to be on Mt. Rushmore. According to Wikipedia, sculptor Gutzon Borglum chose Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt "because of their role in preserving the Republic and expanding its territory." Therefore, TR was presumably included largely because of his acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone for the United States. In retrospect, we may question whether territorial imperialism is really a worthy reason for enshrining a president's head for millions of years to come. Also, at the time the monument was designed, the early 1920s, TR was a pretty recent president who'd died only a few years earlier, so he may have loomed larger in Borglum's and the public's mind than he does to later generations. So there's a chronological/generational bias in TR's selection as well as, perhaps, an imperialist bias.

So if, somewhere along the line, people decided to add a new head to Mt. Rushmore, there's no telling what standards it might be based on. Heck, the very idea of carving a gigantic reproduction of your political leader's head on a mountain has a sort of inbuilt cultural arrogance to it, so maybe the decision is made in an era where America has an elevated sense of self-importance, as well as a renewed disdain for indigenous cultures (since the Lakota people, who consider the Black Hills sacred, would probably be offended by any further alteration). For all we know, that president could've been enshrined by such a society because of her success as a conqueror.
 
Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

Christopher said:
Therefore, TR was presumably included largely because of his acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone for the United States. In retrospect, we may question whether territorial imperialism is really a worthy reason for enshrining a president's head for millions of years to come.
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Thanks a lot Teddy Roosevelt for allowing John McCain's presidential candidacy to be a possibility!

(:guffaw:)

In all seriousness, revisionist history aside, territorial expansion is the reason why it allowed an influx of immigrants to come into the United States throughout the 1800's-1900's, which allowed our nation to become the great superpower that we are known for throughout the world today.
 
Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

^^Yeah, but it wasn't so great for the people who were here first. All history is revisionist, because it's always filtered through one point of view or another, and any major historical event or process is going to have different factors and motives behind it, different consequences and meaning for different groups. The best approach is to try to be aware of all the viewpoints, since no single one has a monopoly on truth.
 
Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

The only question in my mind is why the bureaucrats of the future would decide to alter a national monument in such a significant way decades or centuries after the monument's creation, instead of constructing a new monument altogether.
 
Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

In the future, some American sculptor will pull a Disney and carve EuroRushmore into the Alps.
 
Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

Since no one's posted it:

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Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

^^^^

I see 2 distinct possibilities:

#1) Dude, why do most DVD reviewers who have seen this scene keep referring to this mysterious United States president right of George Washington as "a black woman," when it is clearly evident in that photograph it is President Barack Obama who has regrown his 70's style afro during his 8 year tenure in the White House from 2009-2017. :cool:

OR

#2) How did Ensign Harry Kim of "Star Trek: Voyager" become president of the United States? ;)
 
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Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

Allyn Gibson said:
Firstly, my understanding of the geology of Mt. Rushmore is that you can't put another face there; the granite it too porous.
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Maybe it's a hologram that changes the fifth face after each election?
 
Re: The 5th US president on Mt. Rushmore: Was her inspiration Barack O

I can see why they cut that scene... it's not a very convincing matte painting. True, pre-digital matte paintings tend to look surprisingly impressionist when you look at still reproductions of them, which actually works well with the film grain, but that one still seems pretty unconvincing.
 
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