John Hodgman Brings the Geek to President Obama

Back in November, the day after the U.S. presidential election, I wrote an article demonstrating that President-elect Barack Obama is a geek. This past Friday evening at the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner, John Hodgman brought a very similar argument to the president himself.

My article gained me a small and brief amount of fame, including being quoted in an AP article that appeared in late December. It remains one of the more popular posts I’ve written for GeekDad, and one of the ones I’m most proud of.

Hodgman, known for his work on The Daily Show and his role in Apple commercials, did an absolutely brilliant job, bringing up point after point showing Obama’s geekiness, complete with slides. I’ve enjoyed Hodgman’s books and his segments on The Daily Show immensely, but on Friday he really blew me away. I loved that he used a picture of Obama in front of the Superman statue, just as I did, and mentioned the Leonard Nimoy Vulcan salute incident as well. But I absolutely lost it when he quizzed the president about Dune.

The great job he did is doubly impressive because not only is he not the most experienced of public speakers, but also because he followed the president at the podium, and Obama also gave a great and very funny speech. We at GeekDad salute Hodgman for his performance, and hope to see more like it in the future. See the video of his speech below.

(Because I just had to know, I asked Hodgman on Twitter whether he’d taken any inspiration from my article. He responded that he knew of it, but found inspiration elsewhere. I confess to getting a bit giddy on finding out that John Hodgman—one of the most prominent geeks in the U.S.—had read my writing.)

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