For those of you who are not huge civics geeks like me, willing to give up hours of your Tuesday night to the State of the Union and its pre- and post-speech analysis (and who possibly also think that Tim Russert is a rock star) I present this summary of last night's State of the Union Address:
Some guy whose title I can't currently remember: Oyez! Oyez! The President of the United States of America! (Ok, so this part is not actually so important, but one simply does not have enough opportunities to use the word "Oyez.")
President Bush: Classy tribute to Coretta Scott King
Everyone: Standing ovation.
Justice Samuel Alito: Holy crap, I'm at the State of the Union!
President Bush: The State of the Union is strong.
Everyone: Applause/uncomfortable glances toward gallery to see if honored guests are buying it.
President Bush: We were attacked on September 11, 2001.
Everyone: Wait...what? We can't clap for that. Can we? We're not sure!
President Bush: We will not be attacked with the weapon of fear. Anymore.
Everyone: Boo, fear!
President Bush: You defeated my social security plan and now your grandchildren won't be able to afford prune juice in their golden years.
Republicans: Wha?
Democrats: Sarcastic applause.
Me: Sarcastic applause! Genius!
President Bush: No Child Left Behind is a huge success! Test scores have gone up! Because we started testing! And the score for not testing is 0. But now that we test, we have numbers! And they are higher than 0!
Republicans: Thunderous applause.
Democrats: Do you also hear those crickets?
Public school teachers and administrators: Honey, I think I just burst a blood vessel out of righteous fury! Call 911!
President Bush: But now we will do more! We will have more math and science teachers! We will figure out some way to lure them out of high-paying math- and science-related professions. Then we will have higher scores in math and science!
Republicans: Yay!
Democrats: These tumbleweeds over here are troublesome.
People with lucrative math- and science-related jobs: Ha! Good one!
President Bush: We are now aware that the attackers who attacked us on September 11, 2001 made phone calls. And if we'd only listened to those phone calls, we could have stopped it. Never mind that we missed a lot of other stuff! So now we have a moral imperative to listen to the terrorists' phone calls. And how will we know who the terrorists are until we listen to phone conversations and see what you people are talking about?
Republicans: Clap, clap, clap. Clap...clap.
Democrats: Would it appear unprofessional if we crawled underneath these desks?
The Fourth Amendment: Ack. Cough. Wheeze.
President Bush: God bless the United States of America!
Members of Congress: Clappy clap clap, now can we finally get out of here and start talking on TV?
And now, we bring you the Democratic Response with Governor Tim Kaine of the Commonwealth of Virginia:
Governor Kaine: Here are all of the good things that we're doing in Virginia which are so good that they are much better than anything that the federal government is doing. Here are some good things that the state of Illinois is doing. As well as Massachusetts. Even Republicans in states are doing good things! In conclusion, state government good, federal government bad, vote for me in '08 and God bless the United States of America.
Discussion questions:
1. How did a Democrat get elected governor of Virginia? Is this a sign of the apocalypse? Why or why not?
2. Has Ted Kennedy's head gotten even bigger or is it just me?
3. Nuke-lee-ur or nuke-u-lur? Compare and contrast.
4. On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being "eh" and 10 being "Tom Cruise v. Ritalin") how much do the terrorists currently hate our freedom?
5. When the framers required that the president update Congress on the state of the union "from time to time" did they mean even if it pre-empted Scrubs?
6. Write your own State of the Union speech (or Democratic response if you're a commie pink-o lefty-lou tree-hugging long-haired hippie.) CHALLENGE: Don't use the words September, eleven, partisan, God, or bless.
Thank you, and best wishes United States of America.