I don't watch what passes for television these days but instead get my media fix via the internet. A Facebook friend had posted a link to the yearly address and I opened it in another browser window on my computer monitor. This allowed me to see and hear the speech while commenting to my Facebook friends about salient points. Let me say that I do believe HOPE is a strategy FOX.
In these iffy times in world history we need hope and not doomsayers or sowers of negativity and venom. We need our lawmakers to make good use of their time in office and by that I don't mean in planning for their next run for office but to insure the well being of the nation and its citizens. We need you to put aside the rhetoric and work together. My friends and I discussed the points of the speech openly on Facebook even though we clearly had different stands on some of the initiatives highlighted. During the Bush years I became a closet Democrat for fear of being burned at the stake. That wasn't good for me or the country.
One of the best things about the President's State of the Union, was for me not the speech. It was the bipartisan seating arrangement. There are reasons that college stadiums put the home team fans on one side and the visitors on the other and it isn't the spirit of cooperation. It is to foster an adversarial atmosphere. And the Republicans on one side of the House and the Democrats on the other (a few scattered independents down the center) only made the US vs THEM atmosphere in American politics worse. It even allowed one Republican in Obama's first State of the Union to feel supported enough to Boo. OMG was that embarrassing.
So while FOX is calling this a ploy or trick I am calling it a first step not unlike our first step by man for mankind on the moon.
Hatched last week by Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., the idea caught fire over the weekend after a poll showed a big majority of the public wanting lawmakers of both parties to sit together at the presidential address. A spirited round of private phone calls and e-mails among lawmakers followed, and by Monday at least five dozen House members and senators had announced they had bipartisan dates for the big dance.
Bravo! Let's make America work again.
Hear! Hear! This was the first State of the Union I've been able to watch without cringing--in huge part to the civility engendered by the seating arrangements. Hoping that the civility will extend to our lawmakers working together to put the interests of America and her people first.
ReplyDeleteI am all in favor of civility, but having observed Obama's record of premature capitulation on so many issues it appears to me that the joyful coming together will mainly happen because the entire spectrum of politics is veering WAY to the right.
ReplyDeleteI am all in favor of civility, but having observed Obama's record of premature capitulation on so many issues it appears to me that the joyful coming together will mainly happen because the entire spectrum of politics is veering WAY to the right.
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