The State Of The States
Last night was GW Bush's last State of the Union speech - for those who don't know, this is the event once a year when the President presents himself to the collected Senate and the House of Representatives and talks about, well, the state of the Union. Saw some of it and was struck by how terribly sycophantic is all is, with various members (and I use the term advisedly) leaping to their feet to give him an ovation at the drop of a hat.
It reminded me very much of those West Wing episodes which focused on the event, especially the post-speech analysis, with the focus group results and the counting of the number of ovations. Because outside the UK you tend only to see clips, I'd always thought that the dramatised versions were exaggerated.
Now I know better.
January 31st, 2008 - 06:49
I force myself to listen to the State of the Union every year, and I’m so very thrilled that I listened to the last Shrub SotU. His voice makes my skin crawl. I tend to shake when I hear things like “To build a future of quality health care, we must trust patients and doctors to make medical decisions and empower them with better information and better options.” and know that his definition of “better information” is lies and “better options” is “only what I think is good for you”.