Barack Obama Attached Himself to Premiere of Cosmos, Says Neil de Grasse Tyson

Earlier this year President Obama introduced the first
episode of Cosmos, a Fox sequel/remake of the 1980
Carl Sagan PBS mini-series of the same name, hosted by
astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Whose idea was it to get the president involved? Tyson explains
in an interview at Grantland‘s
Hollywood Prospectus:

What was the process of getting Obama to introduce the
show in the first episode?

That was their choice. We didn’t ask them. We didn’t have
anything to say about it. They asked us, “Do you mind if we intro
your show?” Can’t say no to the president. So he did. He may have
been riding the very high media attention
that Cosmos had been getting on the ramp-up.
Because it was airing in prime time on a network —

It was a good look for him.

Right. Because it was airing in prime time on a network,
reporters that normally covered television entertainment and not
television documentaries were tasked with
covering Cosmos. It was on their beat, the Fox lineup
on a Sunday night. So the media attention ended up reaching not
only the traditional people that would talk about a documentary,
but entertainment reporters. The geek blogosphere was abuzz, and
also people who were curious, fans of the original series, and were
curious what would happen for it being on Fox. What does it mean
that Seth MacFarlane, who’s best known for his fart jokes
— what does it mean that he’s executive producing? There were
a lot of people who had some anxieties about that and were eager to
learn what would unfold.

That same week, by the way, Obama — the White House
— released its budget, which included a reduction in the
science spending in NASA. So if you look at it politically, rather
than gesturally, it’s easy to think of that as a way for him to try
to gain points back in the science community, immediately after
dropping the science budget for NASA.

Can’t say no to the president, even when he’s injecting himself
into something to score political points. A pro-tip for Tyson: Yes,
you can. I imagine it’ll become easier for many celebrities to say
no when a Republican takes the White House again.

Via the Twitter feed of Instapundit