The MagazineThe Age of ShatnerFrom ‘Star Trek’ to ‘the greatest TV star the medium has yet produced.’Sep 13, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 48
• By JOHN PODHORETZ
 Last year, a man named Justin Halpern started posting the irascible mutterings of his own father on Twitter, followed by the phrase “s— my dad says.” Within weeks, a million people were “following” Halpern’s Twitter feed, and the publication of a collection of these sayings has been on the bestseller list for weeks now in preparation for the launch of a new CBS sitcom slightly more euphemistically titled $#*! My Dad Says.  I have no idea whether the show is good or bad, though it is likely to score huge ratings upon its premiere, since it follows television’s second most successful sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. What I do know is that the premiere is a landmark cultural moment, because $#*! My Dad Says will enshrine its leading actor as the greatest TV star the medium has yet produced. His name is William Shatner, and stop laughing. How can I make such a claim about William Shatner, of all people? What of Bill Cosby? Or Lucille Ball? What of James Gandolfini, Jerry Seinfeld, Andy Griffith, even Dick van Dyke? He is not taken seriously as an actor, even though he won two Emmys for his work on the shows The Practice and Boston Legal. In truth, he’s something of a joke, the pitchman for Priceline.com, the fat old guy with a toupee who happily performs numbers from an embarrassing and self-serious rock-folk album he recorded back in the 1960s. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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