I know what you’re about to think. “Oh dear lord, NO!! Not a rant about the State of the Union Address!!” But I’ll have you know that I’m going to think right back at you, “Yes! Oh, yes it is! Yes. It. IS.” And, yes, it is.
I’ll admit to you now that I never actually sat through more than a few minutes of Bush’s final Address about how strong our Union is. But I can’t really sit still for more than twenty minutes anyway, and I do doubt that everyone in that room was actually paying much attention. So I’m guilt-free. Plus, I read the entire damn thing on MSN and I watched snippets on TV, so I’m like triple guilt-free. Really, we just need to get the gist of it all in order to crack lame jokes in poor southern accents. And by ‘we’, I mean ‘me’. Jane is much better at making lame jokes laughable.
Basically, dear Mr. President babbled for a good hour or so about… um… well… Oh, sorry, I was spacing out just thinking about it. Well, he did mention that No Child Left Behind Act from six years ago. That was his main accomplishment. From six years ago. Hot damn. I had completely forgotten about that. Did it do any good? Did anything actually happen? I mean, it has been six years - which felt more like sixteen - and back then I was still watching Sailor Moon religiously, so it would’ve felt rather unimportant at the time. Oh wait, I just read that it did accomplish something. Bush said that “Last year, fourth and eighth graders achieved the highest math scores on record.” My question is, ‘What about the rest of them?’ I guess only fourth and eighth graders really need to be able to read. I was in eighth grade six years ago… Dammit, I need to stay on track with this!! But now he wants to keep more high schoolers from dropping out. What’s the government going to do, take hostages or tempt us with candy? Please, everyone’s a rebel without a cause in high school, and we all sold candy from briefcases for cheap once they outlawed junk food in public schools.
We trust everyone. If we should trust all Americans, then it must be out of pure trust that AT&T phone wires are tapped and people are spied on. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Every other paragraph included the phrases “We must trust” and “Empower”, such as “We must trust people with their own money and empower them to grow our economy.” So… economies grow from trees, and other people are entrusted with our money. Okay, so far so good. “We must trust patients and doctors to make medical decisions and empower them with better information and better options.” … Who makes the decisions now? And are our options and information just semi-decent? Half-assed, even? I’m… I’m a little lost now. But I have to add one of my own that we all know he was thinking: We must trust the dudes who work at Dunkin Donuts and empower them to make the best damn éclairs possible.
Also, did Bush even mention anything seriously bad? Like Katrina? … No? I didn’t think so. We wouldn’t want to hear anything that’s not happy when the state of our Union is strong. Here’s a math problem for you fourth and eighth graders: If strong=happy, and Katrina=not so happy, then strong - not so happy=happy State of the Union Address=happy people! Yay! That makes us happy people!
… If I had a post-it note right now, this is what it would say:
Mr. Cheney -
You smiled at the State of the Union Address!!! You should do that more often; it made me not want to hide my face while yours was on TV. Thank you! :)
- Lola.
Bush didn’t use charts or anything for visual stimulation to keep our attention. I mean, come on, come the fuck on, even former President Clinton used graphs and stuff! So what if they were bullshit because he didn’t get much done other than Lewinsky (Yeah, it’s a lame, over-used joke. You like it.). But at least the guy knew how to keep not only a room, but an entire country awake during a boring speech. Not preparing any charts or even abstract doodles made it seem like Bush didn’t care about our amusement or low attention spans. Lots of people suffer from ADD, you know. If he had someone like Demetri Martin (a contributor from the Daily Show) come in and do some sort of presentation, we’d have all paid attention. At least Demetri takes time and puts effort into things as difficult as procrastination pie charts. He could also keep us entertained by playing an instrument, maybe strumming on the guitar to help break bad news. It would go something like this:
Demetri (playing 'Ziggy Stardust on the guitar'): Our economy’s going down in the shits.
Entire country: That sucks. But I really like this song. Can you play some AC/DC?
See? Once again, happy people!! Not that I’m making an assumption that all happy people/Americans like AC/DC, but still, who wouldn’t want to be told horrible news while listening to 'Big Balls'?
I also propose that the next President should make a show out of this boring event with Guitar Hero 3 ready to play, Cirque du Soleil acrobats, Speed Racer dubbed over with the President’s speech, and maybe some interpretive dance. That sounds like a smorgasbord of fun and it makes it easier to tell us something as scary as if we don’t act by Friday, we’re in danger. That particular Friday was a while ago, actually… I went to work… but it was a good day. I wonder what was supposed to happen on Friday. I got my paycheck, my dad tanked up the car for me, I’m pretty sure I looked good… huh.
Bush is planning on cutting federal spending by spending more federal money on a bunch of little Acts that I’d never heard of before. He said that this week he’d cut over one-hundred basically useless programs so that we’d have lots of money in 2012. Doesn’t he know that the world is supposed to end that year? What good will that do if the world ends right when we finally have a surplus? Bush wants to increase budgets to help out poor schools, send more kids to school, and fund research to find an efficient energy to use instead of oil. And he wants to reduce greenhouse gases. … Didn’t he shit on the Kyoto Treaty?
Although, my favourite quote of his is, “We also must find a sensible and humane way to deal with people here illegally.” That worries me. It’s considered “humane” to put stray animals to sleep when nobody picks them up from the pound.
Chew on that thought for a moment, kids.
[Lola.]
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