There’s nothing like a State of the Union address to expose the Rashoman-like quality of the blogosphere: different bloggers watching the same speech will seem to remember different parts — or none at all.

To the American Traditionalist the speech was a home run: “To me a State of the Union speech is about giving hope and inspiration to us. It is to remind us that we should be proud of America, all it does in the world and be reminded why, as we often forget. It should make us feel hopeful about our prosperity at home and remind us of those than had given their all for our freedoms and liberty. In that sense, I feel [President Bush] accomplished all of that and more.”

On the other hand, for D-Rod and his friend John, the speech was an opportunity to engage in that great American tradition of … throwing knives at empty boxes during televised political events: “The only thing in the speech that caught both our attention was when he said something about a democratic Iran … oh well, back to knife throwing. We found that we kept hitting the boxes with the butt end of the knife, so John upgraded to spoon throwing … I’m not making this up, and no alcohol was involved.”

It seems there wasn’t much in the actual speech that bloggers found worthy of comment. The foreign policy section was the predictable ode to democratization and freedom-spreading that has become President Bush’s boilerplate. The domestic side had only the surprise of a particularly spicy wording about the perennial worry about oil dependency: We are “addicted to oil.”

But bloggers did get agitated about the pre-address arrest of lefty activist Cindy Sheehan. Unclear at...

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