With the State of the Union address less than 24 hours away (and, coincidentally, depriving me of “24” for another week), i found myself wondering how many minutes will be added to the speech by the ovations (standing and sitting) of the sheep in Congress.
I like to call this practice “America’s political laugh track,” because it’s the time when your Senators and Representatives get to show you, the dopey and ignorant American people, which parts of the speech are good and worth clapping for. Because you are nowhere near smart enough to make up your own mind, no sirree, so our elected dunderheads will guide you with their applauding hands.
So i’ve opened this thread for predictions on:
a) total number of interruptions due to applause
b) total number of minutes of the applause
c) most popular buzzwords for applause, e.g. America, God, freedom, liberty, terrorism, Iraq, etc., etc.
On a serious note, i’m not trying to be partisan about this. Ovations occur under all presidents, Elephant and Donkey, and i think that they detract markedly from the purpose of the occasion, which is for the President to address Congress and the American people. Senators and Representatives should sit there and listen, like the rest of us. If they want to garner brownie points with voters by supporting or opposing aspects of the President’s address, they can do it in the media or in letters to their constituents later on. But, in the meantime, sit down and shut up.
You know, i only thought of this after i posted. I had planned to rent a movie, because i don’t think i can sit through what promises to be an excruciatingly painful State of the Union. Maybe i’ll videotape it and tabulate the results later, so at least i can do it relatively quickly.
ALL State of the Union addresses are excruciatingly painful. Just as bad are the follow-ups by the bigwig reporters coming on to repeat what was said and to tell you what was said, because you, the viewer, are too stupid to understand or know what was said.
well guess what…i was irritated as always with the amount of applause interuptions…and so good ol’ Dan Rather of course gave us a number …77
Regarding the speech it was severely disappointing.
Yet another “try to convince the masses” pep talk.and still no concrete proof presented. I thought thats what was going to be included.
Ahh but the best of course, is Bush once again using the word
“Nuke-ya-ler” in the place of Nuclear. Jeez, one would think since its the number one worry, he would have been able to pronounce it by now.
