If you come at the Jedi master, you best not miss.
And on Sunday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who apparently did not learn a single damn thing from the embarrassment he suffered at the hands of Inigo Montoya, did just that.
Let’s backtrack a bit. Prior to voting to repeal net neutrality, the Obama-era regulations that protected consumers from the corporate wrath of broadband internet service providers—thus ensuring a free and open internet for Americans of all income classes—Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai, a Trump appointee, recorded a bizarre anti-net neutrality commercial for the far-right website Daily Caller.
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In the video, Pai is seen waving around a lightsaber as the “Harlem Shake” blares in the background, and is flanked by the Caller’s video producer, Martina Markota, a Pizzagater conspiracy theorist and affiliate of Proud Boys, a group which has been closely tied to white supremacists. (The Caller has a history of hiring white supremacists like former Proud Boy Jason Kessler, one of the organizers of the neo-Nazi march on Charlottesville that claimed the life of activist Heather Heyer.)
So Mark Hamill, best known for playing Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars films—including this weekend’s The Last Jedi, which opened to a whopping $220 million stateside—took issue with Pai’s tasteless video, tweeting, “Cute video Ajit ‘Aren’t I Precious?’ Pai [vomit emoji] – but you are profoundly unworthy 2 wield a lightsaber-A Jedi acts selflessly for the common man-NOT lie 2 enrich giant corporations. Btw-did you pay John Williams his royalty? @AjitPaiFCCorpShill #AJediYouAreNot.”
The tweet by Hamill, an outspoken Democrat who once told The Daily Beast that the Trump cabinet is a “who’s-who of despicable people,” caught the eye of Cruz, who’s never met a pop culture reference he didn’t feel the need to mangle.
Sen. Cruz, in his infinite wisdom, tweeted the following at Hamill (messing up his Twitter handle in the process): “.@HammillHimself Luke, I know Hollywood can be confusing, but it was Vader who supported govt power over everything said & done on the Internet. That’s why giant corps (Google, Facebook, Netflix) supported the FCC power grab of net neutrality. Reject the dark side: Free the net!”
Now, aside from the idiocy of mansplaining Star Wars to LUKE FUCKING SKYWALKER, Cruz couldn’t be more off-base when it comes to Vader and the Empire, a Democracy-obliterating totalitarian regime that committed numerous acts of genocide, including wiping out the Jedi and Princess Leia’s home planet of Alderaan. The Empire basically operated like a giant intergalactic corporation, and the “giant corps” that stand to benefit from net neutrality’s repeal are telecom corporations like Comcast and Verizon, who engage in heavy lobbying. Just last year, Sen. Cruz received $40,840 from the big telecom companies.
Anyway, Hamill—who is great on Twitter—responded to Cruz with the following tweet: Thanks for smarm-splaining it to me @TedCruz I know politics can be confusing, but you’d have more credibility if you spelled my name correctly. I mean IT’S RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU! Maybe you’re just distracted from watching porn at the office again, [heart emoji] –mh.”
The porn nod is a reference to the time Ted Cruz’s Twitter was caught ‘liking’ a fauxcest-themed porn video—specifically, of porn actress Cory Chase, playing a stepmother, pleasuring herself in a doorway while her stepdaughter has sex with a guy in the bed nearby. Cruz rather unconvincingly blamed the episode on an unnamed staffer.
Of course, given net neutrality’s repeal, porn enthusiasts like Cruz—or, you know, that anonymous staffer—may be stuck paying high premiums to stream XXX content online. Sad!
