The President didn’t give an official “State of the Union” address last night, which is just as well. Strunk and White urges us to omit needless words, and assuming Obama stuck with that advice, nobody would be interested in broadcasting a speech that starts with “We’re” and ends with “boned”.
After all, Fox canceled the last guy who used that phrase as a hook, and if Rupert Murdock heard it again on his network, it would probably drive him apeshit with hate. Rumor has it Rupert’s been trying to calm his election-shattered nerves with his new pet Bushmaster python and a tank full of feeder mice all named “Obama”; broadcasting a phrase he thought he killed in 2003 might snap the poor bastard completely. Next thing you know, he’s bought a dingo named “Cheney” and turned him loose on E. D. Hill’s eight kids while he shows her the Outback version of a “terrorist fist jab”.
As speeches go, it would have been more impressive if it weren’t a pile of bullshit we’ve all been hearing all out lives. Let’s face it: sticking it to the fatcats on Wall Street isn’t exactly a Web 2.0 idea. That line was older than dirt when FDR could still bend it like Beckham.
And while it’s nice to hear a sitting president talk about reforming the health care system, I’ve been hearing that crap since Bill assigned it to Hillary to keep her occupied and the fuck away from the private shitter in the Oval Office, and that was seventeen years ago. Now it’s 2009, and to that day I’d have to pay the full nut plus penalties if I were to show up anywhere but my HMO primary care physician’s office with my severed foot.
Frankly, the only truly courageous thing that Obama did in the speech was to tell an uplifting story about a letter he received from a regular student… named Ty’Sheoma. Which is the political equivalent of visiting every redneck Republican south of the Mason-Dixon and showing them the Queen of Diamonds while reciting “The Woods Are Lovely, Dark and Deep.” Jesus, Obama; if you really want to play with three bullets in the gun, just give your next speech at Ford’s Theater and be done with it.
In the final analysis, it was a decent enough speech, I guess. I know that President Obama was going for a reassuring, uplifting, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” vibe… which is an easy tone to take when you’re on deck for a fat government pension. For those of us who’ve looked at their 401K statements recently, it sounded less like Roosevelt and more like Mr. White: “You’re hurt! You’re hurt real fucking bad! But you ain’t dying! Say the Goddamned fucking words!”
But for me, the funniest part of the whole deal was watching the rebuttal speech from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Not because of anything he said, because frankly I was too drunk by then to remember any of it, but because I could almost hear RNC chairman Michael Steele on Sunday shouting, “Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture! That means that America loves Indians! Get me an Indian! No, not an Apache, one of the forehead dot ones! We’ll show America that Republicans are just like the guy in the movie!”
At that moment, only Ron Howard wished harder that Frost/Nixon had won the Oscar.
[tags]Barack Obama, State of the Union, political humor, dark humor, satire[/tags]
