There they are!
The picture that ran with the news article I read about the SotU showed and over-the-shoulder shot of Obama apparently reading his speech from a notebook. In a panic, I flipped through news photos until I found one showing his teleprompters, safe and sound. Whew!
I wonder if he has names for them. Gumby and Pokey. Mulder and Scully. Lefty and Other Lefty.
No, I didn’t watch. I couldn’t. And not just because I can’t bear the sound of Obama’s droning mediocrity.
The State of the Union speech has been a humiliating spectacle for decades. I held my breath for Poppy Bush (he used to trip over his words a bit, remember?). Bill Clinton was the biggest gasbag in history. Gee, that guy could go on. Remember his farewell speech? Hours and hours. He was still talking when they bundled him into a car. W wasn’t as awful as he might have been, but I still held my breath for flubs.
But that’s not it. It’s the whole spectacle of the thing. I actually hate the SotU more when ‘our’ guys are in power, because their behavior reflects on me even a little tiny bit. All that jumping up every twenty seconds, every time your guy says anything at all, barking and clapping like a troupe of trained seals. And the other guys sit and sulk unless The Guy says something so patriotic they kinda have to join in.
Awful. Just awful.
The speech is a big useless pile of applause lines and huge laundry list of junk that is never, ever going to happen and everybody knows it. Nobody even pretends to take it seriously. It has long since outlived its grownup purpose.
Can we kill it, please?
January 21, 2015 — 9:13 pm
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