The New York Times Channels Star Wars In Trump Impeachment Story

The New York Times, fresh off alienating liberal Americans by essentially outing the whistleblower who preciptated the latest round of political trials for U.S. President Donald Trump, have now got pretty much all of Twitter ganging up on them after the Twitter account for the paper’s opinion page posted a bizarre and rambling critique of the Trump Administration, phrased (and depicted) as the crawl at the start of a Star Wars movie. The crawl, which you can see below, refers to the crisis facing the Trump Administration as “The Last Straw.” Both liberals and conservatives have come together to agree on one thing: this is an embarrassing attempt at being cool, and unbecoming of the paper of record.

Star Wars is, of course, a cultural touchstone, and the Times are hardly the first major political or cultural figure to confuse supporters by taking the movies a little too seriously. Timothy McVeigh was a huge Star Wars fan and compared the people killed when he bombed the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City to the non-combatants killed on the Death Star.

In more mainstream circles, Michael Moore’s TV series The Awful Truth once mocked the late U.S. Senator John McCain for characterizing his primary contest against then-Texas governor George W. Bush as “like Luke Skywalker flying through the Death Star.”

Everyone from conservatives (who criticized the Times staff as milquetoast) to progressives (who, among other things, suggested that the Times should “quit f–king around,” which also came in the form of a Star Wars crawl, which was a nice touch) thought the tweet was an embarrassment and probably shouldn’t have happened.

For their part, Disney is betting huge on Star Wars right now. The Mandalorian will debut in November with the launch of Disney+, and that same month, a game titled Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order will be available for gaming consoles. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will be in theaters this December, wrapping up the “Skywalker Saga” that began with the original Star Wars in 1977. While Disney and Lucasfilm will be working with Marvel Studios honcho Kevin Feige on a new Star Wars project soon, we haven’t heard any credible reporting that the studio is planning to work with the New York Times.