politics

The State of the Union, Reflected in a Fun House Mirror

Like Rashomon, different bloggers watching the same speech will seem to remember different parts -- or none at all.
February 1, 2006

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 first what had happened, eventually it was revealed that Sheehan, who’d been invited to the speech by a few members of Congress, was wearing an anti-war t-shirt that read: “2245 Dead. How many more?”

Sheehan herself blogged this morning at Buzzflash.com and explained what happened after she was, as she characterized it, roughly escorted out of the House. “I was never told that I couldn’t wear that shirt into the Congress. I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up,” she writes. “If I had been asked to do any of those things … I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later. I was immediately, and roughly (I have the bruises and muscle spasms to prove it) hauled off and arrested for ‘unlawful conduct.'”

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Geistweg wrote that Sheehan’s arrest was “a perfect display of Bushland style ‘democracy,’ we find that wearing a t-shirt and being vocal are illegal in the House of Representatives. Fortunately for the hundreds of members of Congress gathered to hear the State of the Union, taking bribes and being incompetent [are] not.”

Fashionistas were just dismayed that Sheehan would wear a t-shirt to the address. This is from Marshall at On Tap: “I come from a background where it would have been unthinkable not to wear a tie to court. (Someone had to talk me out of wearing a tie to jury duty recently.) Wearing a T-shirt into the chamber of the United States House of Representatives? Are you kidding? Not acceptable. Ever. And especially for the State of the Union.”

We tend to agree with Josh Marshall, who admits that despite being a political junkie, actually sitting through the speech comes pretty close to his idea of hell: “I have a confession: I’m not sure when the last time was when I watched the State of the Union address … the thing itself (watching the actual production in real time) and then the imbecile chatter afterwards — I just can’t deal. I find it unbearable.”

Gal Beckerman is a former staff writer at CJR and a writer and editor for the New York Times Book Review.