Beamed far into outer space by now, analyzed and tweeted to death within seconds of its delivery, another State of the Union address by President Obama fell on admiring and disgusted ears Tuesday night. You could almost feel it being lost to the ages in real time, in a nation where practically everyone is checking to see whether their last comment was retweeted or not. (I think my favorite RT of the evening was from @TheTweetOfGod: “I was trying to come up with a neat way of saying John Boehner looks like a constipated apricot but I couldn’t.”)
Like many of you, I can no longer watch important live televised addresses now without the wit and wisdom of the many virtual friends who live in my iPhone. How funny we can be, stopping the wisecracks and the spot fact-checking long enough to appropriately acknowledge the president’s “They deserve a vote” refrain for grieving survivors of victims of gun violence. We go from snark to somber so fast. It’s exhausting and also distracting.
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Hank Stuever
Hank Stuever is The Washington Post’s TV critic and author of two books, “Tinsel” and “Off Ramp.”
State of the Union 2013
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This president and his successors will struggle against this for decades — obeying the formal theatrics of the State of the Union address, while speaking to a global audience of wired weirdos. Even when most Americans may be receptive to the message, we’ve just become too distractible to be a good audience.
Nevertheless, the president confidently delivered a speech filled with a steady stream of second-term proposals and hopeful visions. In an address that was twice as long (in total words) as his rousing inauguration address three weeks ago, some melodious lines emerged about the middle class, about what sort of jobs we all might have in the future if we get our act together, about raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour.
“After a decade of grinding war, our brave men and women in uniform are coming home,” the president said in a litany of been-there, heard-that. “After years of grueling recession, our businesses have created over 6 million new jobs. We buy more American cars than we have in five years and less foreign oil than we have in 20. Our housing market is healing, our stock market is rebounding, and consumers, patients and homeowners enjoy stronger protections than ever before. . . . Together, we have cleared away the rubble of crisis, and can say with renewed confidence that the state of our union is stronger.”
Earlier in the evening, it seemed the cable networks might be able to pull themselves away from the riveting story unfolding in the mountains 80 miles east of Los Angeles as law enforcement officers possibly cornered Christopher Dorner, an ex-police officer turned slaying suspect. Americans couldn’t look away from the cabin in the woods, which was now ablaze. Poor Chris Matthews of MSNBC had to devote the whole hour leading up to the State of the Union address — easily the second- or third-biggest night of punditry all year! — to this . . . this breaking news. If he was irritated, you couldn’t tell. He took it like a man.
On Fox News, Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham had just a few minutes to segue from the California standoff to their dripping disgust that, once again, Obama has the stage.
