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February 02, 2005

As longtime readers of mine (all two of you) know, I generally dislike listening to political speeches--the State of the Union Show doubly-so. Politicians nowadays rarely say anything useful in public. Their remarks are either bland or fatuous, and they are so by design. No one dares to say the wonderfully incorrect things Barry Goldwater used to get away with, and the truly lamentable thing about Jim Traficant's expulsion from the House was the end of his bizarre one-minute speeches (who else in Congress had an animated GIF of himself swinging a two-by-four on his homepage?). (See here for more of my thoughts on milquetoast politicians.)

But political speech need not be entertaining; it can be merely insightful or informative to be useful. Here, something can be said for some speeches, as tonight we might expect the particulars of some of Bush's policies, especially OASDI reform. I hardly think it worth it, though, to sit through nauseating applause lines and statist proposals to glean what might be had with much less time and stress from a scan of the text the next morning. I think I'll make other plans for tonight.

And this puts me at odds with my fellow pajamahudeen, who will exploit the instant nature of the blogosphere to liveblog the SOTUS. It takes a true junkie to pick apart so meticulously so little. I suppose my threshold for irritation is too low.

Over at the Hoosier Review, Matthew Stevenson found one good reason to watch the SOTUS. He's right, I did get a kick out of it.

Posted by Zach Wendling at February 2, 2005 04:29 PM

Comments

Posted by: Joel Thomas at February 2, 2005 08:08 PM | permalink