I like the State of the Union speech better in Los Angeles. Oh, I know that sounds silly, but hear me out.
At home you have a full day. Maybe you are home by 5:30 or 6 PM. The big government music SWELLS as the President walks into the Congress. Everyone applauds, the camera turns to see who the First Lady is sitting with tonight.
The speech starts and drowns on. During this time you maybe walk your dog, go through your junk mail, listen to your phone messages. The President’s Speech, if you happen to catch parts of it at all, doesn’t sound quite so much like he is a lying hypocrite as much as he is just part of the background of white noise of your daily life. Sure, not one word out of his smirky mouth is true, but neither is the mail that offers pills to “melt the pounds off”. It isn’t “offensively” un-true.
It is a little more annoying if you get caught driving home, but only because the President pre-empts most of the traffic alerts.
Here, Presidential speeches start at 9:00PM. You are in for the night, probably watching TV and on your second or third glass of wine. You are enjoying the mindless entertainment of the idiot box and you have forgotten the worries of the day. One makes a valiant effort, in fact, to move on from anger and despair over the situation in the world and just to sit happily in your nice little home with your bf and your dog.
Then your pleasant night is ripped away from you by the parade of the State of the Union. The President gets up to tell us all a bunch of stuff he will never do and other stuff meant to scare us into submission (Mars Mission – anyone remember that; Iraq with Uranium – anyone remember that; Social Security Reform, Axis of Evil, With us or with the Terrorists). My buzz is gone and my head wants to explode.
So I think I will skip tonight’s Parade of Lies and Parody of Compassion. As he bankrupts the country to give tax breaks to his oil friends and leaves us with a worthless currency and a debt of impossible size (even the Dread Pirate Roberts would be hard pressed to face those). As he twists the Iraq Study Group’s report from “Begin Diplomacy with Iran” into “Threaten Iran and Attack them in Iraq” – all while claiming to listen. I think I have heard enough of this man.