It’s “May the Fourth,” and they’ve wheeled out Mark Hamill, who’s stuck with a scripted role. He reads it woodenly, perhaps because he feels a little bad that he’s required to be an egotist, and humor is wrung out of having Barack Obama insult him for being a narcissist. Why am I being subjected to this?, I wondered, and what is the point of using “Star Wars” to promote the Obama Presidential Center?

I guess it must be because the Center has been likened to certain “Star Wars” images, but not in a good way. I’m seeing this from last October: “Obama’s dour new Presidential Center is getting savaged on social media: ‘Death Star in Chicago'” (NY Post): “‘Locating the Death Star in Chicago was a bold move,’ Cruz (R-Texas) wrote on X… while reposting a video of the latest work on Obama’s Chicago presidential center…. Some posted videos with ‘Star Wars’ X-wing fighters closing in on the library building, while others Photoshopped the structure sideways to replace the torsos of the massive AT-AT walkers from ‘The Empire Strikes Back.'”
So I think Obama’s idea is to flip the criticism, to laugh at himself, and to show the haters what, through sheer force of coolness, he can do. He never says it but he wants you to say it: The force is with him. There, now I said it. Oh, that Obama. He’s at it again.