Extraterrestrial Obama

Barack Obama is not the first, but he’s the first real president to speak openly about “Area 51.” However, he did little more than mention that military base, which is considered secret even though it shows up on maps. Should we rewrite the history books? Should we say that in 1947 extraterrestrials crash-landed in Roswell (no, really) and were shipped to Area 51 (also real)? Such things have been speculated about for 33 years. Until now, evidence for the discussions came only from fake presidents like Bill Pullman, who visited the underground vaults as President Thomas Whitmore in the 1996 film “Independence Day” and found a functioning spaceship.

In 2008, Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich spoke about aliens as if they were his neighbors. If you were to have a long conversation with Newt Gingrich, science fiction enthusiast and Republican presidential candidate in 2012, you’d probably hear some even more haunting and unnerving things. It was inevitable, therefore, that the president would at least mention the secret name in front of TV cameras.

Different from His Film Alter Ego

The American entertainment icon Shirley MacLaine, who received the Kennedy Prize from Obama in the White House, was pleased. In the award speech Obama said, “Now, when you first become president, one of the questions that people ask you is: ‘What’s really going on in Area 51?’ When I wanted to know, I’d call Shirley MacLaine!” She spoke about it in an earlier TV interview: She’s been fascinated by aliens since she was 18, when a general warned of unidentifiable flying objects. Since then, she has encountered them herself.

MacLaine’s books speak of life after death (as well as lives between lives) and of extraterrestrials, whose existence she says the government should finally acknowledge. That is one side of the story. On the other side, Obama was certainly in a position to say he knows what’s going on. In the film, President Whitmore stood like an ignorant fool until it was explained to him that there are things even he was not allowed to know.