State of the Disunion

Tonight is the last time President Bush gets to tell us that the State of our union is strong. I for one, am sick of the lie. Just once, I’d like the President to walk down the congressional aisle, soberly ignore all the people reaching out to him, stride right up to that podium and say: “My fellow Americans the state of our union is… well, how should I put this? Ummm, we’re fucked. My bad.”

The most annoying part of the State of the Union Address is when they have these planted people in the audience that are supposed to be representative of the typical or (more often) the extraordinary American who has overcome adversity and still manged to capture the American Dream. There’s the widowed 24 year old black woman with newborn twins whose husband just died in Iraq but she is still supportive of what he was doing and will, herself, soldier on. Or the octogenarian who still works 3 jobs even though he’s got lung cancer and is missing a foot. These people are meant to inspire us to believe the lie. I always feel sorry for them. They always seem to have this expression on their face like they know they’re being used, but somehow they got tricked into this like a crack addict gets tricked into prostitution. It’s just... dirty.

Since this is his last State of the Union Address, I’d like to see President Bush pull out all the stops and give us examples of what’s really going on:

“My fellow Americans, tonight I stand before you humbled. Things have not really being going according to plan. For example I met a young woman from Omaha Nebraska named Michelle Nelson. Michelle works hard and plays by the rules. She finished college with honors, got married and had a son. Sadly, the $60,000 in student loans combined with the $20,000 in high interest credit card debt forced her and her husband into a sub-prime mortgage which has now doubled. Money got tight, the fighting never stopped. Her husband started drinking when the bank forclosed on their home. Some health problems forced the couple to seek emergency medical care and their combined insurance denied the claim forcing them into bankruptcy. Which, of course, has been changed during my administration to make it almost impossible to declare, thereby closing the only real avenue to financial recovery. Michelle couldn’t be here tonight. She killed herself 3 days ago. But her orphaned child, now a ward of the state, is here and looks forward to seeing his daddy again when he completes his 4 year prison sentence for drunk driving.”

May God continue to bless the United States of America.