George Takei Reveals His Real Goal
Oh Myyy! All those Grumpy Cat tweets were serving a greater purpose.
George Takei is promoting a musical about Japanese internment called "Allegiance."
From “Star Trek” to social media superstar, George Takei is experiencing a second round of celebrity thanks to his Internet fans. But this evolution was well-planned, Takei explained Thursday at FedTalks 2014 in Washington.
“So by trial and error, I built my small base of sci-fi geeks and nerds into a much bigger one and found that what worked was humor. And particularly, Grumpy Cat,” Takei said. “Grumpy Cat increased my base enormously, and then I started injecting social justice issues and it grew even more.” In fact, it grew to 1.42 million followers on Twitter.
With an expanded audience, Takei got into the really serious stuff. “And then I started talking about the internment of Japanese-Americans,” he explained – and that was his goal all along.
This “dark chapter in American history” is part of the actor’s personal history, as he recalled his entire family being forced with guns out of their homes and then put into American prison camps during World War II. At age 9, Takei was released. “And I had a teacher that continuously called me the ‘Jap boy,’” he recalls. “What had I done to this plump old lady?”
But Takei's getting the last laugh now, starring in a coming-to-Broadway musical called “Allegiance” that tells the story – with song – of Japanese internment.
And internment didn’t leave Takei soured. His father got him interested in the political process, and he even remembers the day he became an “activist.”
“[My father] took me one Sunday afternoon, before I even was a registered voter, to the campaign headquarters of Adlai Stevenson for President … and I met Mrs. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt,” Takei says, remembering the “wave of whispered electricity” before the former first lady arrived in the runup to the 1952 presidential election. “And then the dark-suited men come rushing in and we’re all lined up and then this great lady, all teeth, smiling.”
Takei's kept at it ever since, appearing last week on “The Colbert Report” to implore the American public to vote in Tuesday’s midterms. But, alas, turnout in the majority of states was down. Takei, in an interview before his talk, blamed the result not on turnout but money, saying the Citizens United Supreme Court case was at fault.
“I must say it’s understandable when you have the Koch Brothers involved in the game – what’s the point?” he says.
