The State of the Union

I know I'm a little late on this, but did anybody watch the State of the Union address on Wednesday? I didn't watch it this year, but I did one year. I believe it was in 2005, back when I sort of cared about politics. Now, five short years later, I couldn't care less.

I took two political science classes, one in the fall of 2004 and the other in the beginning of 2005 (what was considered the winter semester). I thought it would be fun to take the classes during a presidential election year, and it was, for the most part. Looking back on it though, the teacher had a huge liberal slant. At that time though, I didn't even really know what being liberal, or conservative for that matter, meant. I was young and naive, if you will. I'm still young and naive, for the most part, but I guess not as young and naive.

Anyway, when I watched it back in 2005, I could barely make it through. For starters, the president would say something, and then it was as if the he had a clapper attached to him to make him talk again (CLAP ON, CLAP OFF, CLAP ON, CLAP OFF, THE CLAPPER). He would talk, then pause, congress would stand up and clap for what felt like an eternity, then stop all of a sudden and the cycle would repeat. I bet if you took out the clapping, the speech would have lasted half as long! And when the president was actually talking, you never got anything out of it. It was full of sound and fury, but signified nothing, to butcher a quote from Shakespeare. And this has nothing to do with who the president was in 2005. I'm sure the State of the Unions speech from president Obama was the same rhetorical clapfest as the one I watched given by president Bush.

And another thing, does the State of the Union really have to be on every major network? I mean really? In this day and age of the Internet, and 24/7 news stations, why does it have to be on every freaking channel? Now, I know it only interrupts the regularly scheduled programming for about an hour on one day a year, and I don't even watch much television myself, but that isn't the point. Why does it have to be on every flipping channel? Why?!?! It says in the constitution that the president is supposed to give a State of the Union address to congress. Well, he can give the State of the Union address to congress, and if people want to watch it they can, but it doesn't need to be on every channel. Rotate it between the major networks each year like they do the Super Bowl, put it on the internet, and you should be golden. Anyone that wants to watch it will watch it, and anyone who doesn't want to watch it can avoid it more easily.

Well, those are my thoughts on the State of the Union. Nobody cares what I think anyway, so there you go. I'm just a squirrel trying to get a nut, to butcher another quote that wasn't from Shakespeare this time. I've been doing a lot of sports posts lately, so I figured I'd change it up a little with this. I hope you enjoyed it.