Somehow, in the
Age of
Twitter and the
sanctification of snarky wit, George Takei has become a resurgent
icon. He has become, essentially, a dryly wry
comedian, with the succinct catchphrase of a long, smooth, baritone-voiced "Oh, my!"
Takei's Twitter handle is (naturally) @GeorgeTakei, and there he dispenses forth fairly constantly a stream of amusing comments, mostly ironic observations on retweeted imagery. He has, as well, made a cottage career of appearing as a
camp caricature of himself in various venues. He voiced himself in
Futurama. In one episode of
The Big Bang Theory he appeared as a figment of Howard Wolowitz's imagination, verbally sparring with
Katee Sackhoff (of
Battlestar Galactica) on the course Wolowitz ought to pursue to win back his girlfriend. In
Psych he was himself appearing at a comic book convention, which the comedic detective leads infiltrated by convincing Takei that they are his personal assistants. Well into his seventies, he continues to do dramatic work as well. One notable appearance, voicing a separatist general in
Star Wars: The Clone Wars, saw the former "Captain Sulu" become the first
Star Trek main character to appear in a
Star Wars production.
But most memorable to me will always be his appearance at the
Comedy Central roast of
William Shatner, where Takei quipped of Shatner's acting (and his own now-public sexuality), "if my
partner sucked that hard, I would never leave my
chateau."
Note: According to Oolong, "He's actually rather a lot bigger on facebook than he is on twitter - 8M to 1.4M, more or less. I see his posts there re-shared much more than I see him retweeted, too (though to be fair I do spend more time on facebook than twitter)."