The State of the Union and some stuff they can all agree on

I used to look forward to the State of The Union speech.  In a real way it was like watching an episode of The West Wing except in one where Martin Sheen gets interrupted by SUPER-ANNOYING cheering from people who supposedly like him every time he strings together 7 words in a row.  Tonight I caught some big chunks of this year’s speech – and I’m suddenly pretty worried about my own attention span.  The speech lasted 70 minutes officially, but it’s entirely possible that it’s still going on regardless of when you’re reading this. 

Barry had about 4 complete sentences flowing from the teleprompter, but each moment he moved his mouth he was interrupted by snarkily-cheering Democrats, some of whom were holding sings up that simply said, “Nee-nor-nee-nor-nee-nor.”  (I guess being in the majority feels good)  And if that wasn’t enough, the folks on the other side would vocally sneer (harder to do than it sounds) at the President or at least try to appear so stoic that they may or may not have been mannequins.  At times there was even some bizarre retaliatory cheering where they would take turns yelling “We have spirit yes we do!  We have spirit how about you!.”  At one point Nancy Pelosi actually threw her ubiquitous pom poms at some not-so-limber Republican senators who looked to be easily over 100 years old.  But sometimes, both sides cheered at exactly the same time as if they actually agreed on something the President said OR because it had been 20 whole seconds since the speech was interrupted.  Some of my favorite “unanimous cheering” lines were:

“We need to support doing things that will help people to find more money to donate to political campaigns.”

“I love dogs.”

“Your government totally has your best interests at heart – all the time – so just keep sending in those taxes and we’ll do some good stuff.  And, even if you don’t send enough, don’t worry, we’ll go ahead and spend what you didn’t send in anyway.”

Isn’t it great that our impartial CongressPeople can all get along sometimes when they’re not accusing each other of devil-worship and being against children?  Speaking of impartiality, after the speech I watched some of the super-fair analysis on the FoxNews from objective people like Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin.  After hearing them talk, I’m kinda convinced that The President is about to rob my house, sell my stuff to the chinese, and then give the proceeds to the terrorists.

But I’m not that worried, cuz he’s probably still trying to wrap up his speech.