Jim Geraghty quips, “Obama’s new NASA policy: We won’t go to the moon, but we will reach out to nations that have the moon on their flag.”

As Paul Mirengoff wrote on Sunday at Power Line:

In the video below, Charles Bolden, head of NASA, tells Al Jazeera that the “foremost” task President Obama has given him is “to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.” Thus, NASA’s primary mission is no longer to enhance American science and engineering or to explore space, but to boost the self-esteem of “predominantly Muslim nations.”

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Bolden’s use of the word “foremost” is a combination Freudian and Kinsleyian slip that’s very much reminiscent of recent utterances on similar topics:

• “As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

– General George William Casey Jr., chief of staff of the United States Army, Meet The Press, November 8, 2009, on Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s apparent (very apparent) case of Sudden Jihad Syndrome at Fort Hood.

• ‘This campaign has made our staff better and, more importantly, more diverse.”

–- Archliberal Howell Raines, then the New York Times’ editor, on the recruiting efforts of his newspaper, as quoted by Mickey Kaus, Friday, May 9, 2003.

It’s a curious development when “diversity” becomes the explicitly stated chief objective of an organization’s figurehead. I had assumed that the goal of NASA was to explore space (I know, I know, I’m really dating myself with that one), the goal of the New York Times was to put out the best newspaper possible, and the goal of the Army was to protect the nation.

When did making the employees of those organizations feel warm and fuzzy trump all of that?

(H/T: 5′F)

Update: “The Obama administration: Erasing the line between satire and reality since January 20, 2009.”