So Discovery got something right.

[Graham Kennedy]

Credit where it's due...

The new series Star Trek Discovery stars Asian actress Michelle Yeoh as the ship’s captain and black actress Sonequa Martin-Green as her first officer — and this has caused some Trekkies to fret about the lack of white men in charge.

While the overall reaction to the new Star Trek trailer has been positive — although there are the usual complaints from Star Trek fans about continuity errors — one group of fans is particularly upset about the show’s diverse cast of characters.

As both Heat Street and Daily Kos point out, the series’ YouTube page has been bombarded by comments labeling the show a “SJW” plot aimed at shoving “political correctness,” “forced diversity,” and even “cultural Marxism” down viewers’ throats.

Additionally, some angry Twitter users have even proclaimed that the show’s diverse cast is evidence of a “white genocide” conspiracy aimed at eliminating the white race from the face of the Earth.

As you know, I'm no fan of Discovery. But fair due, if it's pissed off the white supremacist crowd then you know it's doing something right.

Of course, those who have been paying attention know that Michelle Yeoh is not in fact the Captain of the Discovery, but of a different ship. Rest assured, idiot racists, the Captain of Discovery is indeed a white man. Genocide averted, I guess. Whew!

[Mikey]

Umm... DS9 had a captain who was not a white male. As did VOY...

[Graham Kennedy]

Umm... DS9 had a captain who was not a white male. As did VOY...

Nobody ever said you have to be smart to be a racist.

I suspect most of those complaining had never seen Star Trek before, given that "diverse cast" has pretty much been one of the defining traits of the show since, well, it first existed.

They just saw two non-white women dominating the trailer and freaked out.

[Mikey]

Ought to show 'em the clip of Kirk planting one on Uhura.

[Nutso]

I don't get it. I didn't even realize the Star Wars movies were diverse. I had to be told that Finn was black, Poe was Latino and Rey was not a man by a relative who screamed out, "It's not supposed to be this way!" He's boycotting Star Wars because they had female leads, and a black guy. He is outraged by Star Wars now. There was also some social media politician who predicted that Rogue One would be a financial failure because it was too diversified, and when it was obvious Rogue One wasn't going to bomb, later changed his tune to say that Rogue One would be a failure because it won't make as much as The Force Awakens. Outrage over Star Wars.

I don't know how to say this without being facetious, but I didn't even notice that the Star Wars background humans were of various human ethnicity, on the Resistance and the bad guys. I think it was Red Letter Media who pointed that out for me.

Then there was some screaming in the social media about Dr. Strange and the Ancient One character being played by Tilda Swinton. I read that some Asians were mad at the whitewashing. A comedian named Margaret Cho got on twitter and was giving an emotionally charged tweet about the" whitewashing." Tilda Swinton gave a very nice, reasoned, thoughtful (non-twitter) response that these issue are important to her personally, and she and the creative team at Marvel Studios were trying to avoid the stereotypical "wise, old Asian master." Maybe Ms. Cho realized this was rational, or maybe she realized she was outclassed as a debater by Ms. Swinton, but Ms. Cho revealed she knew nothing of the source material that Dr. Strange was based on. She just joined the outrage. Meanwhile I was ecstatic that Tilda Swinton was going to be in a comic book movie. I mean. she was in Constantine but, that's not the same as this, the Marvel Studios era. Goddamn she's great.

Anyway, it's just movies/tv. I'll get mad at the quality of the product before I get mad at the diversity or lack thereof. Hopefully. I'm not exactly immune to overreaction, and I ain't a reasonable and sound person.

[Graham Kennedy]

There is a bit of an online culture war going on for the last couple of years. Some of it is present in real world politics - the way some on the right see Trump as "sticking it to those liberals who want to ban people from upsetting them and make everyone guilty for being white!"

A lot of that kind of thing goes on online - search for anything like "stupid SJW" on youtube and you'll see thousands of videos made by guys lashing out at black lives matter, feminists, etc. I even saw one earlier today in which a guy took the Michael character's line of "we have to fire first" as being, as he put it, "A call to Black Lives Matter to engage in terrorist action". Yes, seriously. Another I saw was speculating that because she's called Michael she is "a transsexual black 'woman', like Michelle Obama". For those who don't know, there's a theory on the right that President Obama is gay and Michelle Obama is secretly a man in drag. Which tell you how sane all this is.

One way this culture war manifests itself is in attacks on anything that isn't about straight white men. Any leading female character or any leading non-white character will bring a host of comments about "Oh look, it's another show with a left wing political agenda" or "another affirmative action pick" - to these people affirmative action is the only reason non-white people ever succeed at anything.

This is what drove a lot of the reaction to the all female Ghostbusters last year - helped along tremendously by the fact that the movie was crap, of course. It's why some people are ranting that BOTH the recent Star Wars movies have had female leads.

So long story short, what's happened here is that Discovery has brushed up against a large and very dark and nasty part of the internet. I doubt it will make a whole lot of difference to the show, although as with Ghostbusters, the idiots will be helped along tremendously by the shitshow that is apparently going on inside of Discovery.