You may not have noticed, but Joe Biden gave an "incendiary" State of the Union speech last night. And in case you weren't following the collective efforts of the mainstream media to buck up our fragile president with a spin that would make a Maytag dryer envious, here's the short version from mainstream publications.
Since I already knew what would be in the speech, I found other, more interesting activities to occupy my time. After clipping my toenails, I spent a very productive five minutes picking the lint out of my navel and another few minutes trimming my eyebrows. That was followed by making popcorn the old-fashioned way. I grew up before the age of microwave ovens and learned to pour out the exact amount of oil and add two vigorous shakes of the salt shaker before beginning the popping process.
That exciting description of my State of the Union alternative was no doubt equally exciting as watching Biden.
Actually, I managed to catch some of the "highlights" of the speech, knowing I would have to write something in the morning. I should have asked Paula for double time.
If you read the media accounts of Biden's speech, you would be struck by the commonality of the descriptions of Biden's efforts.
The State of the Union word of the night: "Fiery."
BBC: "State of the Union: Biden draws election battle lines in fiery speech"
Reuters: "Biden takes on Trump and Republicans in fiery State of the Union speech"
CBS News: "California Republicans respond to Biden's fiery State of the Union speech"
Yahoo News: "Key takeaways from Biden's fiery State of the Union speech'
USA Today: "Biden's State of the Union was fiery"
CNBC: "Biden electrifies Democrats, spars with Republicans in fiery State of the Union address"
There were undoubtedly many more, but the bile was rising in my throat, and I just couldn't go on looking.
Did you ever wonder how Nazi Germany was able to keep strict control of the news? Every morning at Joseph Goebbels' headquarters in Berlin, the Nazi propaganda artist would approve the "narrative" of the day for each story, sending out suggested headlines and keywords to be used in the stories. Radio news was even more tightly controlled as scripts had to be approved by Goebbels' office.
Naturally, that led to a strange similarity among all the news coverage. Citizens grumbled, but their bellies were full, and the Nazis supplied enough distractions to make most of them forget they were living in a police state.
In America, the media receives "suggestions" from the White House, and I wouldn't be too far off base to speculate that the use of the word "fiery" to describe Biden's amped-up address came from the White House press office itself.
Reveling in the political moment, Biden fired multiple broadsides at “my predecessor” without ever mentioning Trump by name — 13 times in all — raising his voice repeatedly as he worked to quell voter concerns about his age and job performance while sharpening the contrast with his all-but-certain November rival.
The scrappy tone from Biden was a sharp break from his often humdrum daily appearances and was intended to banish doubts about whether the 81-year-old president, the country’s oldest ever, is still up to the job.
For 68 minutes in the House chamber, Biden goaded Republicans over their policies on immigration, taxes and more, invited call-and-response banter with fellow Democrats and seemed to relish the fight.
Note that none of the "doubts" about Biden's age were alleviated despite the AP's effort to "banish" them. And just between you and me, Biden "raising his voice repeatedly" made him sound like an angry old man rather than a president.
Congress and the White House should go back to delivering the SOTU the way it was done at the beginning of the republic. Washington and Adams gave SOTU speeches to Congress, but Thomas Jefferson started a tradition of sending the address to Capitol Hill without delivering it — a tradition that lasted until Woodrow Wilson became president.
Hopefully, this will be Biden's last State of the Union address and the last ever delivered to Congress by the president in person.
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