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Does Barack Obama's have "very high" "geek quotient" as chief technology officer -- a.k.a official White House geek -- Todd Park claimed today in a CNN interview? It is one thing to do things that one might consider geeky, it is quite another to score "very high" on the official geek scale. Park claims Obama deserves this "very high" ranking as a "a hugely enthusiastic proponent of the power of data, technology and innovation to advance national priorities," he told CNN's undefined. But being a real-deal geek involves a total embodiment of nerd-culture. Does Obama have that kind of dork-cred? Let's take a look.
In order to quantify Obama's geek quotient, we took a look at all the things that might give him geek-cred. In order to earn a "very high" on the geek-o-meter, at least half of Obama's nerd-activities would have to qualify as "High-Geeky." Let's see how he does.
Barack Obama likes geek pop-culture things like Star Wars and Star Trek. Real nerds are into pop-culture things that involve made-up worlds, some might say to escape the sad reality of their loser existence. Obama is totally into that kind of stuff. He participated in a light-sabre fight. In public. The event didn't even have anything at all to do with Star Wars. The White House was hosting an event supporting Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics. There were fencing champions there. Yet, the president chose the Star Wars weapon as his implement. He is also into Star Trek. "I grew up on Star Trek. I believe in the final frontier," he said at a 2008 campaign event. And word is he collects SpiderMan and Conan the Barbarian comics.