SOTU

I feel that it's my duty as an American to watch the State of the Union address each year. I also really love the theater of it all: I like seeing the interactions as the President makes his way inside (who gets a smooch, how good an acting job the President and the leaders of the opposite party will do of making nice); I like analyzing the composition of the First Lady's Box (dirty, I know); I like seeing the great visual divide when one side of the floor is on its feet, offering thunderous applause, which the other side sits there looking neutral or plain pissed; I like trying to predict the exact moment when Ted Kennedy's head might actually explode.

But still, I have trouble making it through the SOTU, because I really have trouble listening to our President. I don't actually think that W is purposely evil; I actually think he's well-intentioned, if often misguided. But I find him to be so damned smug that I feel like my own head may explode, and I don't care how many times people tell me it's a regional dialect thing, it is NUKE-LEE-ER.

I thought about making last night's SOTU into a drinking game (Do a shot every time he says nucyoular! Chug each time he inappropriately and manipulatively invokes the memory of 9/11!) but figured I'd be dead from alcohol poisoning by 9:15, so instead I watched a bit and fell asleep probably 10 minutes in, waking occasionally when the Smelmooo made indignant noises that carried from the other room.

I did wake up enough to catch the end of Flavor of Love, which features nearly as inarticulate a protagonist as the SOTU, but I was impressed by how compassionate and lovely Flavor Flav was when Red Oyster (real name: Abigail, although Red Oyster seems more fitting) told him her dad was injured in a car accident.

I fear that this makes me a bad, but possibly typical, American, that I found Flavor Flav more compelling and sympathetic than our President. Flavor Flav in '08? I think I need a drink.