{"id":6491,"date":"2006-01-31T13:05:24","date_gmt":"2006-01-31T18:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6491"},"modified":"2006-01-31T13:05:24","modified_gmt":"2006-01-31T18:05:24","slug":"watching-tonights-state-of-the-union-address","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/watching-tonights-state-of-the-union-address\/","title":{"rendered":"Watching tonight’s State of the Union address"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Note mentioned some interesting context<\/a> today for the State of the Union address from ABC News’ Polling Director Gary Langer:<\/p>\n

1. “Partisans watch these things; rather than torturing themselves, people who don’t like the guy can just turn to another of their 100 channels. When we polled on the SOTU in 2003, we found that the president’s approval rating among speech watchers was 70 percent, versus 47 percent among those who didn’t watch. As we put it at the time: ‘Simply put, people who don’t like a particular president are considerably less apt to tune him in.'”<\/p>\n

2. “These speeches tend to be composed of poll-tested applause lines, so the people who watch are already predisposed to like what they hear.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s why we’ve seen fewer post-speech polls gauging the public’s reaction the past few years — the data was always skewed.<\/p>\n

Of course, many of us will be tuning in anyway, despite our displeasure with the president. To help the speech “go down a little easier,” Heather Havrilesky Salon’s television critic, recommends a drinking game<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The game is simple enough for even your average registered voter to understand. Basically, every time Bush says “terror,” “terrorism,” “terrorist,” “war on terror” or “Terror Dome,” you drink.<\/p>\n

Also drink when the president winks, nods and points at someone in the audience in rapid succession; drink each time he refers to 9\/11 or uses the word “nuke-u-lar,” and drink something bitter when he says that “the state of our union is strong.” […]<\/p>\n

When Bush says “protect” as in “protect America,” “protect the lives of Americans” or “protect our right to eavesdrop on the phone calls of any American,” drink. If he refers to his solemn right to spy on antiwar activists as the “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” drink three times.<\/p>\n

Also, drink whenever the president uses the word “security,” as in the “security of all Americans” or “a secure nation.” If he mentions “Social Security,” turn the volume up; you didn’t hear him correctly. If he talks about “securing an exit strategy in Iraq,” drink, then look outside to see if the sky is falling.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given what we’ve seen, this game is almost guaranteed to kill the player, so it’s probably best to avoid it, especially if you have a Health Savings Account.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Note mentioned some interesting context today for the State of the Union address from ABC News’ Polling Director Gary Langer: 1. “Partisans watch these things; rather than torturing themselves, people who don’t like the guy can just turn to another of their 100 channels. When we polled on the SOTU in 2003, we found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}