Obama at the Gridiron: Revenge of the Vulcan?

For a guy who gave away the secret of his Trek cred even before this famous pose, President Obama sure took a lot of heat for his Trek/Wars mixup of a "Vulcan mind trick" last week. Trouble is, it came from supposedly serious pundits, not just the late-night laffmeisters. And we already know he knows full well the difference.

So now the president gets his revenge, or a chance to explain, courtesy of Saturday night's annual Gridiron Dinner roast of and by journalists in D.C. It's never televised, though some transcripts of the evening have nonetheless surfaced :

"I’ve been trying to explain this situation to the American people, but clearly I am not perfect," Obama says at one point in his monologue. "After a very public mix-up last week, my communications team has provided me with an easy way to distinguish between Star Trek and Star Wars." (Laughter.) "Spock is what Maureen Dowd calls me.  Darth Vader is what [GOP Speaker] John Boehner calls me."

And then to close—reclaiming by mocking his inner Trekkie, in public, once again:

"I want to thank everybody for just a wonderful evening … And in the words of one of my favorite Star Trek characters, Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise: ‘May the force be with you.’ ”

Don't forget—we can thank John Hodgman for a lot of this initial investigative D.C. Trek work on camera: