To boldy go where many have gone before

In this week's print edition of The Onion (in select cities an actual paper edition is available, and Los Angeles is one of those lucky ones), in the A.V. Club section (the non-satire part), there's a column by The Hater (subtitled "Pop Culture Love Letters") took on Eminem's latest video, "We Made You" (in which he parodies a number of pop culture paragons).

The column in the print edition that hit stands yesterday is different from this online version, although the gist is pretty much the same. Because the print edition cannot include an embedded video, the column lists highlights of his satire, including perennial punching bags like Kim Kardashian and Lindsey Lohan. The point of the column was that Em's jabs were a bit dated, as pop culture goes. However, as she also mentioned the old school elements he included; it seemed clear Em wasn't looking to be cutting edge with the satire.

To that end, in the list of highlights that was in the print version of the column only was this: "Dr. Dre and Eminem re-enact the casino scene from Rain Man, as well as several scenes dressed as Dr. Spock and Captain Kirk from Star Trek" (see screen capture below):
Yep. "Dr. Spock."

The character on the original Star Trek portrayed by Leonard Nimoy was Mr. Spock (and later he ascended to higher ranks), but he was never Dr. Spock.; "Bones" McCoy was the doctor. Dr. Spock was a famous real-life pediatrician who wrote a best-selling book, but, to the best of my knowledge, never appeared on any Trek series or movie.

And with even my tepid level of geekitude I recognized the error immediately. Even as a very mild fan of Star Trek I consider that to be dragging up a pretty hackneyed mistake. It's not remotely clever, in any context, at this point; it's just lazy (or, rather, nonexistent) copyediting.

It struck me as her point about Em's dusty spoof became a wee bit hypocritical, in a way. Sure, he's behind the time in the targets for his costumed barbs, but she's behind the times in rudimentary pop culture distinctions about a tremendously popular science fiction series (even outside the geek arena)—especially for one whose focus as a journalist is purported to be… pop culture.

But it's undoubtedly already outdated of me to say (even though the issue hit the stands only yesterday), because the online column (which does not include the references to the characters names, only an allusion to general Star Trek*) came out back on April 7.

What can I say? I'm out of date that way, reading text on actual newsprint, nine days later. How archaic. Just like being able to distinguish '60s fictional characters from '40s actual people.

~

* Because there's no mistake online, there's no furor in the comments about it. I have to imagine it would have been clarified ad nauseum by this point had "Dr. Spock" been mentioned there. As it stands, the commenters dwelled only on Eminem's incongruous pairing of characters from the original series with some from The Next Generation. Deftly eschewed hate, Hater.