I’ve been angry for days about what we won’t hear from the President tonight. Together, Talib Kweli and Thom Yorke say everything he won’t:
You can download the mashup by popping the little down arrow at Soundcloud.
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The only President to ever actually say the State of the Union is bad in his speech (or as he said “not good”) was Gerald Ford in 1975, and he lost.
Thank you, Marc. This is great.
I can’t watch the real SOTU address—I can’t take another ort of even Obama’s brand of American exceptionalism. I think we foreigners are worn right the hell out from the exhausting nonsense of it all.
If it’s any consolation Ranylt I’m an American and I’m sick of it too. I’m really hoping the EU gets its shit together and eclipses us soon, because I think they have the potential to be a great blueprint for a unified, peaceful planet. But I think it will take at least a generation or two before my country learns to play well with others.
The only President to ever actually say the State of the Union is bad in his speech (or as he said “not good”) was Gerald Ford in 1975, and he lost.
Correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation. My guess is that his 1976 defeat had more to do with being stained by his pardon of his old boss than pointing out a truth about the state of America’s union.
Your broader point may have some validity, but the problem is that the phrase “the state of our union is strong” has come to mean absofuckinglutely nothing, considering every SOTU for the last 35 years has included it, even when it really wasn’t entirely true.
I’m happy that Obama was elected, I still don’t regret voting for him, and I think we are definitely better off than we would have been under a President McCain. But the ugly truth is that unemployment is still higher today than it was two years ago when Obama took office. Certainly that’s not entirely (or even mostly) his fault, but I don’t think anybody expected that the economy would still suck this much and that so many people would still be experiencing financial hardship halfway through his first term.
The state of our union, on January 25, 2011, quite frankly sucks.
roscoe, anyone who was paying attention thought the economy was going to be a hell of a lot worse at this point.
On that front, I have no complaints about the Obama admin, even though I have plenty elsewhere and must admit I never looked at him through those (insane and naive, IMO) rosy glasses that seemed so common. Maybe that was partly due to having watched him get outclassed in a UMAss-Boston graduation ceremony by a graduating senior’s speech and coming away asking if he had used a single action verb in his speech. The pre-POTUS candidate Sen. Obama was already adept at the say lots of pretty nothing that can mean anything.
Whoa, holy punkass guest blogging. Nice to see you swing by, Marc.