Showbits

Earlier this week, John Hodgman, perhaps best known as the PC from Apple's "Get a Mac" ads, spoke at the annual Radio & TV Correspondents' Dinner, with President Obama in attendance:

Though the USA's current presidential administration does seem to be more science-oriented than its predecessor, the correlation between that and the President's own geeky nature and background is oft overlooked.

Obama's familiarity with Superman's legacy is evident not only in the picture Hodgman presented, but also when Obama roasted McCain some months ago. The President has since appeared in several comics of his own, including not only Spider-Man, but also an original title that segues perfectly with Hodgman's slideshow.

However, as proud as I am to have a geek president, I think we need to consider the image that Hodgman reinforced. It was just a decade or two ago that geeks were shoved into lockers, had sand kicked in their face, and never, ever got the girl. To hear Hodgman speak, those days are still with us, and the lines are still sharply delineated as the jocks-and-geeks war rages on.

In reality, as society becomes more technologically dependent, the geeks are inheriting the earth. Those who know how to use Twitter aren't just sharing lolcats; they're helping the Iranian revolution. Playing video games does not make us geeks; that activity has gone mainstream. Some of us would just as soon go for a 150-mile bike ride as we would watch Star Trek.

So if not the classic stereotypes of yesterday, and not the extremes that Hodgman parodied, then what defines the modern geek?

For that, I'll let geeks speak for themselves:

The day after the presidential inauguration, CNN.com recently ran a story with a rather provocative opening:

Jamaal Young was watching Barack Obama and his family greet an ecstatic crowd in Chicago, Illinois, on Election Night when he realized that something seemed wrong[:] Obama didn't shout at his wife, Michelle, to shut up. The first lady didn't roll her eyes and tell Obama to act like a man. No laugh track kicked in, no one danced, and no police sirens wailed in the background.

The article goes on to quote someone as saying that "The last time we had an image of a black family that was this positive it was The Cosby Show". That's a long time for 13.4% of America to have been misrepresented. Is it true that, in the last 17 years, television has consistently portrayed black families as negative or stereotypical? Most shows that focus on a single family are sitcoms, which by their nature stretch the bounds of believability, which would thus exclude the likes of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. But The Cosby Show was both funny and inspiring, so the entire genre cannot thus be ruled out. Then what shows of the past two decades can we look to for positive representation? Soul Food? The Chappelle Show? Everybody Hates Chris?

It's ironic that televisions come in either color or black-and-white, because this is an issue of both that extends beyond the TV set. Racism has been the topic of television before, having featured prominently in shows such as Sanford and Son and The Jeffersons, both which predated Bill Cosby's sitcom by a decade. It has been ages since I watched any television show with regularity, but I don't remember it being a regular topic of The Cosby Show. Does that transition mark progress? Are we moving beyond discussion of color as a means of ignoring the problem, or of acknowledging that it is no longer a problem worth discussing? In an editorial for Computerworld pundits have called for more color-blindedness: "Until the media stops using skin color to get ratings, skin color will always be a factor in what people think of others," wrote one; "We elected a black president. So what? The media are the ones making a big deal about race, not the general public. The media are the ones dividing people by race. If everyone wants equality, we need to stop making race an issue," wrote another.

I don't agree that sweeping a problem under the carpet is the equivalent of solving it. But I wonder if I am guilty of just that when I confess an ignorance to how black families have been portrayed in media. Was Jamaal Young's expectation of the Obama family truly provactive? Or is it simply what television has trained us to believe?