If the NPR people need help figuring out Star Wars, they could PROBABLY find someone on the Internet to explain it to them.... (Star Wars References)

Google the phrase "Movies about mind control" and a couple of things happen:

First, you move up a notch or two on that list the federal government, with it's more than 1,000,000 people who have a "classified" or higher security clearance keeps of all of us and our search histories. I know all about that list, and I recommend throwing it off as much as possible. Here's what I do: For every real search I do, I do a fake search to keep my place on the list (which is not meant to measure how much of a threat a person is to the federal government but instead is used to manipulate zinc prices, zinc being where the power's at these days. Zinc is perhaps the single most valuable element in the entire universe. That's what they don't want you to know: zinc is what you should be thinking about. The Powers That Be (Major League Baseball, Bill Cosby, and a platypus that developed sentience) are so hellbent on you not knowing how important zinc is that they've made up all the other elements in the periodic table just to hide zinc in plain sight as it were. You didn't really think there was an element called Protactinium, did you? That's just the name of the acne medicine Sentient Platypus uses. Platypusses (Platypi?) have terrible acne.

Here's a sample of a search string I do to throw off Sentient Platypus and his henchmen:

search for "movies about mind control"

search for "That wasn't a real search I did about movies about mind control."

search for "Ways to convince the Powers That Be that I'm not really interested in movies about mind control."

search for "Is Demi Moore really a bisexual lust goddess? Because that's kind of hot."

Note: That last one was really just for my curiosity. But it does help throw off Bill Cosby, who gets distracted by stuff like that. Also, she is, according to Gawker.

That's result one. Result two of a search for "movies about mind control" is a list of sci-fi movies about mind control, only one of the top ten of which (got that?) was a Star Wars-based substance. The others, ranging from "Village of the Damned" to "Destroy All Monsters" -- a movie which... well, I'll let the description speak for itself:

a race of evil aliens known as Kilaaks... release the world's population of giant monsters from their quarantine on Monster Island, employing powerful mind-control devices on the monsters as part of their master plan for subjugating humanity. When the secret equipment used for this purpose is discovered beneath Mount Fuji and destroyed, the aliens make a last-ditch attempt at reclaiming their foothold by summoning three-headed Ghidorah from space -- but by then, Godzilla and the other city-stompers have rallied together to defend the Earth from the alien menace.

How has that never been nominated for an Academy Award? What does it take, Godzilla crying in the ocean and yelling "Wilsoooooooooooooon!"

And that, my friends, is how you do a movie reference that doesn't involve Star Wars, even a little.

Which is the point of this post, of course: I was able to find 10 movies about mind control on a quick Google search, so it's obvious that there have been many, many movies about mind control, which makes it all the more obvious that Star Wars has, indeed, become the only thing pop culture can reference, because with all those movies about mind control, when push comes to shove, even the best and brightest, as exemplified by NPR game show host Peter Sagal and his guests, can only come up with lame Star Wars references.

Here's what happened: On Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, on NPR, about two weeks ago, the opening quiz, "Who's Carl This Time?" touched on Herman Cain's not-at-all-derailing (in a good moment for the American public, though, Cain's chances appeared to be derailed by his complete inability to articulate even a single coherent policy) sexual harassment scandal, as follows:

SAGAL: Politico, the online journal that broke the story, they came to him and they said, you know, we've got this story, what is your reaction? And they tried this for ten days and they couldn't get a response.

[Guest Peter] GROSZ: And a reporter walked up to him and said, "Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?" And asked him over and over again, and Cain looked at the ground and he didn't speak. And then he looked at the guy and he said, "Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?"

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: And then they were like, "no more questions."

SAGAL: Right. (SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: So he's a Jedi.

Which isn't even what happened in the movie, not really: First of all, Obi Wan didn't say "No more questions." He said "These aren't the droids you're looking for."

And second of all, Herman Cain is clearly not a Jedi, he would be if anything a Sith Lord, but it's hard to imagine a Sith Lord being as clueless about the Space Rebellion as Cain was about the Libyan one:




NOTE: I have no idea what the picture on this post has to do with anything, but if you google "Herman Cain Star Wars," that's one of the images that comes up.