March 21, 2022

Turns out Stacey Abrams, Georgia's future governor and a voter registration powerhouse, is also a dedicated Star Trek fan.

And the producers of Star Trek: Discovery are huge Stacey Abrams fans.

So it was logical (ahem) that Abrams would be featured in a cameo at the end of the Season 4 finale, as "President of Earth."

You can watch the scene above, in which President of Earth Abrams agrees immediately that Earth will rejoin the Federation and then provides words of encouragement to Captain Michael Burnham, also an African-American woman, about "getting to work" on a positive future.

Thing is, this is all very on-brand for Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the show, broke barriers by constructing a multi-racial, multi-cultural crew of the Starship Enterprise. Episodes of the original series from the 1960s frequently tackled political and social issues.

The episode "Plato's Stepchildren" featured the most celebrated, for the time interracial kiss on television.

And yet here in 2022, Stacey Abrams playing a fictional "President of Earth" is a bridge too far for conservatives?

The National Review is unhappy...

Ted Cruz is unhappy...

Elie Mystal puts it in modern-politics perspective:

Here's an interview with Abrams from 2019 about her love of Star Trek.

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