George Takei Calls Out Anti Gay School Board Member — Star Trek demotivator meme with Sulu and Kirk at a sensor scope, captioned 'Douchebag Sensors Operational'

George Takei Calls Out Anti Gay School Board Member

2010viral videoclassic

Published August 11, 2026

A 2010 PSA video in which Star Trek actor George Takei calmly called Arkansas school board member Clint McCance a douchebag for his homophobic Facebook posts about LGBT teen suicide. The clip went viral, fueled parodies, and preceded McCance's resignation days later.

lgbtq memes celebrity reaction memes social justice memes backfire memes early 2010s memes

Overview

George Takei Calls Out Anti-Gay School Board Member is a public service video the Star Trek actor recorded for the Trevor Project in late 2010, aimed directly at Arkansas school board member Clint McCance1. Takei's flat, measured delivery of the word douchebag toward McCance became the clip's signature moment and the reason audio rips ended up floating around as standalone sound clips45.

The video works as both activism and comedy. Viewers found the mismatch between Takei's calm Sulu-era baritone and the blunt insult funny while agreeing with the point he was making about McCance being unfit to sit on a school board1. It became one of the widely shared Takei clips of that era and helped cement his second-career profile as an LGBT advocate2.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube (Trevor Project) / blogs (viral spread)
Creator
George Takei
Date
2010

On November 1, 2010, George Takei uploaded the video to YouTube through the Trevor Project, an LGBT youth suicide prevention group2. He was already involved with the It Gets Better campaign, which had been launched weeks earlier following the suicide of Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi3. The trigger for the video was a Facebook rant by Clint McCance, vice president of the Midland School District in Arkansas, attacking Spirit Day, an It Gets Better event asking people to wear purple in memory of LGBT teens lost to bullying-related suicide3. McCance wrote that he was glad gay people gave each other AIDS and died, and said he would only wear purple if they all killed themselves3.

How It Spread

The clip went viral fast. Stereogum's Videogum blog wrote it up the same week, calling it the best and joking about the awkwardness of insulting a homophobe by implying he was gay1. Look to the Stars and other outlets promoted it as a defining Takei moment2. On November 8, 2010, one week after the video posted, McCance resigned his Midland School District seat3.

Remixes started almost immediately. Two days after the upload, someone spliced Takei's face and audio into Isaiah Mustafa's Old Spice The Man Your Man Could Smell Like commercial3. Standalone MP3s of the douchebag line, in short, medium, and full-length cuts, were mirrored on Michael Hanscom's blog4, and the clip landed on soundboard.com for easy playback in chats and calls5. That soundboard afterlife is how the line kept circulating long after news coverage moved on.

How to Use This Meme

The meme typically lives as an audio drop rather than a template. Common usage is pulling the douchebag clip from a soundboard and playing it as a punchline reaction to someone acting bigoted or ignorant online5. Video edits often place Takei's line at the end of another clip for a deadpan mic-drop effect4.

Frequently Asked Questions