I watched the whole furshlugginer thing and although I thought I would be writing a whole screed today, I find I don't really have all that much to say about it. I didn't hear anything that I didn't expect to hear. I glanced through the reactions to the speech in this morning's Seattle Times, and one of the letters expressed just about everything I would have to say about the speech. A man who lives in Bellevue, across Lake Washington from Seattle, said:

A divisive and arrogant speech by a man blind to the great number of people who seek for some shared national purpose and goals. He is totally partisan, he acts not as a president of the United States but an appointed mouthpiece of extremists and plutocrats. His speech was totally predictable, as was his stated agenda.

That about sums it up as far as I'm concerned.

Why the hell don't they see that the people who are doing the loyal opposition response to State of the Union Speeches take a few vitamins before going on the air? Pelosi and Daschle—ye gods!—for people in public life who are supposedly used to speaking to crowds and to television cameras, they looked like a couple of beginning broadcasting students trying to read off a teleprompter for the first time, and not doing a very good job of it. The stumbles, the pasted-on smiles, the stilted prose. . . . And a similar speech delivered some time back (last year's SOTU speech?) by Washington State governor Gary Locke had the same amateurish characteristics. I've heard Locke speak a lot, and he's a good, dynamic speaker; but on that occasion, he looked and sounded like he had overdosed on Valium before going on camera. Same thing with the response speeches last night. What gives?

Don Firth