The SOTU speech should have NO applause & NO Hopping up & down

[Philosoraptor]

It's just childish, the constant applause, jumping up and down like kids at the Bozo show, it reminds me of Planet of the Apes.

The damned thing should be delivered with no interruptions, no applause or lack of applause, just read it and get out. All the leaping up and down and clapping makes it TWICE as long.

Who's with me here?

[MADem]

1. Good luck with that idea. The whole exercise is a way to show the clowns in the cheap seats back

home how powerful--or NOT--the Dunce is, how popular--or NOT--his ideas are, and to allow the majority and minority parties an opportunity to express their feelings in a highly visible fashion.

It's tradition. It will never, ever change.

Heck, we could always go back to the way George Washington handled it--he literally "mailed it in." Some bozo brought the thing over, and the CLERK read it into the record. Fi' true!

[RC]

4. It has only been a 'tradition' since Radio & TV.

A Brief History of the State of the Union

4. Thomas Jefferson refused to give his message in person. He believed it was too similar to the format of the British monarch's Speech from the Throne. Instead, he sent a written message to Congress.

6. After 112 years of written messages, Woodrow Wilson--amid some controversy--made his speech before Congress in 1913. Franklin D. Roosevelt permanently established the tradition of the oral address in the 1930s.

7. Calvin Coolidge's 1923 message was the first to be broadcast on radio.

8. The speech was referred to as the "Annual Message" until 1934, when Roosevelt began calling it the "State of the Union." The new name came into general use in 1947.

11. Truman's 1947 address was the first to be broadcast on television.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070123/23statefacts.htm

[MADem]

12. That's a LONG time. Most Americans weren't alive before the new tradition started.

This is all they know. The 'tradition' is what it is. It's what people have heard and seen for decades, and it is what they expect, and what they want. There's no going back.

Hell, once upon a time, people had to get UP to change the TV channel. And you only got THREE of them. Using something called an "antennae" and rich folk had fancy motorized ones on their roofs. I tell kids about how, if they lived back in the dark ages, THEY'D be the remote control, and they don't believe me. You won't see anyone wanting to go back to that sort of tradition, either.

People like a little drama to liven up a dull speech. They like to comment on how so-and-so looks, and speculate about what this one is whispering to that one in the cut-away shots.

Times change, traditions change. This one is ingrained.

[bklyncowgirl]

5. The traditional standing ovations at the SOTU is a game dearly beloved of the Beltway crowd

Who stands, who refuses to clap, who pretends to be asleep--it's all a game carried out before the TV cameras and no doubt gossiped about at DC cocktail parties for weeks.

If you listened to Chris Matthews last night yakking like a highschool girl in the cafeteria about all of the ovations and what people were wearing and who went up to the President for an autograph--you get it. They love this stuff.

As a citizen who pays for all of this silliness, I find it annoying--especially in a time of war--when you'd think a slightly more serious approach would be warrented. Not likely to happen--not when you combine politicians and TV cameras. It's sort of like the Academy Awards.

The one note of clarity and seriousness all evening was Jim Webb's Democratic response. No doubt he will be slammed at the DC party circuit for failing to play the usual part of the loyal and insipid opposition.

These people love their traditions as dearly as the aristocrats at Versailles--before they lost their heads, of course.

[sam sarrha]

2. planet of the Chimps.... im with you on that.. totally absurd just Nazi salute it..

it is easier

[izzie]

3. Maybe it was better when some one read it to Congress and

a President wrote it in place of the President reading it to Congress and some one else wrote it. I will have to read it as I can not hear that man for that long. You also know this guy is not going to do as the people want after how they voted yet used his vote into office and said the people had voted for him to do as they wished.. That I saw him do after he got in on second term. I think he spent that all ready. He is a man who has made up mind to do just as he likes. Bush's War will go on.

[mockmonkey]

6. Ok, no jumping and no clapping but

can we have a laugh track?

[MADem]

15. And how about some music, too, to move along the dull spots? NT

[mockmonkey]

19. Benny Hill Music

and Resident Shrubbery already likes to slap bald guys on the head. Call the BBC, I think I smell a hit.

[MADem]

22. JUST the ticket!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NT

[partylessinOhio]

7. Bravo! I agree! The Democrats should be ashamed to show their faces today

for showing any kind of support for a person that should have been impeached long ago for his crimes against this nation.

I would have preferred that the idiot in chief would have spoken to empty Democrat seats. The least the Democrats should have done was to remain silent and seated.

There should have been none of this - standing ovation:

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

8. And imagine how this plays out overseas. Here is our government applauding a criminal.

Can you imagine anyone clapping and giving standing ovations for Ted Bundy?

[Eric J in MN]

10. Good point.

I hadn't thought of that.

While Bush is at 28%, and we just elected a majority opposition, when people overseas see a roomful of legislators applauding Bush they may think Americans are united in support of him.

[MADem]

16. Anyone who even notes it will know what the deal is. It is a well-established ceremony, after all.

Ironically, these folks overseas, in general, have a better concept of how our government works than we have of theirs. They got a good glimpse of how the game is played when Clinton had to do his speech after the Monica business, and some bastard screwed up the teleprompter, causing Clinton to have to "wing" the first few pages of his speech from memory. That got a lot of play across the pond.

[MADem]

13. Ted Bundy was never a President of a powerful nation.

Goofy analogy, to put it kindly. Ted Bundy murdered women after charming them and picking them up in his Volkswagen. He was a serial murderer of attractive young ladies. He didn't start reckless wars and commit our forces to them.

A better analogy might be Saddam's little purge video. Or the throngs cheering for (fill in name of any reviled leader, preferably one that had some sort of election, even if a sham). There are dozens of examples in recent decades that will do. But Ted Bundy? That's a stretch.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

17. Shrub is a sociopath, the stuff that mass murderers are made of. Although you're right in a sense.

Bundy had the cojones to approach his victims personally which Shrub doesn't.

[Eric J in MN]

9. I didn't like all that applause at the SOTU during the Clinton years,

...let alone now.

It seems like how legislators would act in a dictatorship.

I'd prefer if the president mailed the speech to Congress so we could avoid the sight of our legislators applauding the president again and again.

[Hubert Flottz]

11. Why do they call it the state of the UNION speech when a scabby

bastard like George Bush is giving it! The GOP is all about UNION busting.

And today he's headed to Dupont the most anti-union chemical company on earth to brag about his "State Of The UNION" speech. And then there's Dick Cheney sitting right behind Bush all night last night who owns stock in KB&R the worst scab outfit on the planet! It was the State Of The NonUnion according to lying George Bush speech, in reality.

[MADem]

14. Indeed, despite the fact that the word isn't used in the same context...

that is an interesting contrast, isn't it?

How ironic that he'd praise the (more perfect)union at night, and crap on unions during the day....

[Dukkha]

18. it's as pointless as the award show obituaries

where the tribute to those who died that year turns into a childish popularity contest. totally disrespectful.

[Ganja Ninja]

20. The autograph hounding was unseemly to put it mildly.

And quite frankly I think the Democrats were way to congenial with Bush that night.

[KharmaTrain]

21. This Speech Was Nothing...

Anyone remember Clinton's SOTU's in '98 & '99? One was right after the Monica inquisition began and he was all but written off for dead. The other was right after he was acquited by the Senate and was overseeing military operations in Iraq and Kosovo. Those speeches had far more applause...and I'm know I was up and cheering, too. It was classic Clinton those nights...and helped pick up moral in the wake of all the right wing bullshit.

This year's speech was amusing as there weren't that many outbursts as their had been in years past. Most the Repugnicans looked like they'd rather be somewhere else...and numbnutz got the lamest response in a SOTU in recent memory. This speech was even more irrelevant thanks to the moron's escalation speech a couple weeks ago...and the revelations that came out in a DC courtroom just hours before the speech. The boy was groping for "love" up there and got none...but this is nothing comparing to the dead room he'll have to work next year.

[Book Lover]

23. Many of our former presidents were, as well as myself

For example, Thomas Jefferson thought Washington's oral presentation was too kingly for the new republic. Likewise, Congress's practice of giving a courteous reply in person at the President's residence was too formal. Jefferson detailed his priorities in his first annual message in 1801 and sent copies of the written message to each house of Congress. The President's annual message, as it was then called, was not spoken by the President for the next 112 years. The message was often printed in full or as excerpts in newspapers for the American public to read.

The first President to revive Washington's spoken precedent was Woodrow Wilson in 1913. Although controversial at the time, Wilson delivered his first annual message in person to both houses of Congress and outlined his legislative priorities.

With the advent of radio and television, the President's annual message has become not only a conversation between the President and Congress but also an opportunity for the President to communicate with the American people at the same time. Calvin Coolidge's 1923 speech was the first annual message broadcast on radio. Franklin Roosevelt began using the phrase "State of the Union" in 1935, which became the common name of the President's annual message. Roosevelt's successor, Harry Truman, also set a precedent in 1947 when his State of the Union speech became the first to be broadcast on television.

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