Gee: Why I do not like State of the Union addresses
Feb 6, 2019, 7:35 AM | Updated: 7:38 am
President Donald Trump gives his 2019 State of the Union address. (Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
(Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
I do not like State of the Union Addresses. And here’s a shocker — I felt that way about them during the last president’s term, and the few before him.
Here’s why.
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They’ve become this predictable show of handshakes, and partisan photographs of people standing and clapping for the things that their party already has been saying to us.
Then there’s usually a moment where we see a person who is truly deserving of recognition, that only a truly cold-blooded person wouldn’t stand and clap for, and that is supposed to suggest some sort of bipartisan unity.
But then, back to the partisan stuff.
And to make it even more tiresome, we get a “response” from the other side that is written before they even hear the actual State of the Union address.
We wake up, and then we see our friends, coworkers and family cherry picking their favorite talking points that they saw on TV. Whether that is from the address itself, or from several hours of post-event coverage that we selectively watch on whatever news channel best fits our agenda.
Maybe we even flip the channels to amuse ourselves at how two or more channels have such different reactions to the same speech by the same guy we just watched together.
Sure it is a tradition. Sure, it has been like this for a while, and unfortunately I know it is not going away.
But I wish it would, for us all.
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