Obama denies being 'Spock-like'
WASHINGTON: It's official: US President Barack Obama has nothing to do with highly logical, largely insensitive Mr. Spock character on the science fiction TV show "Star Trek."
"What's the biggest misconception about you?" ABC interviewer Barbara Walters asked Obama.
"Me being detached, or Spock-like, or very analytical," said Obama. "People who know me know that I am a softie. I mean, stuff can choke me up very easily."
On the show Mr. Spock, who is half-human and half-Vulcan -- an alien race -- struggles to remain detached and suppress any human emotions.
"The challenge for me," Obama told ABC, "is that in this job ... people want you to be very demonstrative in your emotions" in the press or on television, he said.
"And if you're not sort of showing it in a very theatrical way, then somehow it doesn't translate over the screen," he said, according to an advance transcript from ABC.
Obama is known for keeping his cool under pressure: when he gave the order in May to storm the compound in Pakistan where Al-Qaeda terror chief Osama bin Laden was hiding, the president calmly went out to play golf.
"All presidents keep secrets," The Los Angeles Times wrote, "but over a 72-hour span leading to Bin Laden's death, Obama's capacity to keep a poker face was tested as never before."
Mr. Spock, famously portrayed by actor Leonard Nimoy, appeared in the Star Trek television show of the 1960s and in movies based on the series in the 1980s. Spock was portrayed by Zachary Quinto in a 2009 Star Trek movie.(the news)
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