Last Night was the State of the Union address.

I thought it was great. Trump did a good job. It was a good speech!

I’m annoyed at the bad job the media did, though. I watched it on channel 8, which is ABC in our area. George Stephanopoulos was the main news announcer. But there were others with him that also chimed in at the end. I’d like to know if there were other newscasters there representing other networks. Thankfully the announcers don’t interrupt during the speech to make commentary. But of course they swooped in as soon as it was finished to start their sniping. As usual they seemed unable to think of one positive thing to say. They focused on anything they could twist the wrong way. I wish I could have heard how more conservative announcers handled it. Were there other news organizations represented there?

One commentator, I missed his name, even made the false claim that none of the Democrats applauded for anything. That really flipped my lid! It was completely false. I saw some intrepid Democrats, at least they were sitting in that section, stand and clap at various times. And sometimes even most of them applauded, though not always very enthusiastically. I even noticed Nancy Pelosi clap once. That really surprised me. I wonder if she meant it? I think it was when faith was mentioned. I hope she did.

Of course if you didn’t watch you wouldn’t know the difference and would probably have believed it. Actually my husband who did watch it also believed it. I was shocked that he could have sat right there and watched with me and didn’t know the truth. He said he couldn’t tell which were the Democrats. I guess we need a bigger tv! Maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised, though, considering what a bad job the videographers did. The news announcers can’t interrupt and brain wash people during the speech like they probably want to, but the videographers can affect our impressions of things by what they show. I was frequently frustrated by how often they panned way out so it wasn’t easy to even see how the audience was responding. It looked to me like it happened a lot when there may have been a more bipartisan response from the crowd. It was hard to see but there did seem to be more evenly distributed movement throughout the auditorium at those times. (The times when none of the Democrats responded it was easier to spot them.) It was also bizarre how often the videographers seemed to focus more on the furniture and carpet in the isle ways, they must think the tv audience would really find that interesting. And frequently they didn’t show the audience at all. We could hear lots of cheering but couldn’t tell where it was coming from. They also gave us a lot of shots from behind and at odd angles so we couldn’t tell which side of the audience we were even looking at.

I wonder if the other networks gave the viewers a different view of things. I’ve watched several State of the Union speeches over the years, and I don’t remember ever seeing such a bad job by the camera/video people! Usually they seem to want everyone to see what is really happening in the chamber! Typical of the media since Trump was elected, they leave out everything they can that might make him look good and twist the rest. Of course I know he doesn’t help matters with his tweeting.

I don’t follow twitter. I just hear about it on the news the next day.

This morning when I watched the news while on my treadmill, I was glad that no one repeated the false claim about the Democrat’s lack of response. Of course they still managed to be negative about everything they could, even while admitting it was a successful State of the Union speech.

I usually watch channel 8 in the mornings. But this morning out of annoyance with the lefties on that channel I switched to channel 5. (I used to watch that channel more but it doesn’t always come in very well here.)

I was hoping for a more positive take on the State of the Union speech. Of course I was disappointed. Have you noticed that even positive things can be said in such a way that they come across as an insult. The news announcers seem to have that down to a fine art.

Not that they tried to say positive things. But even fairly neutral things came out as a slam. In comparing the length of the speech, for example, they said  “it wasn’t the longest one ever.” "It was the third longest.” I can’t imitate their tone of voice here of course, but it was said in a way that seemed to imply it was very nearly the longest. And then the way they said "it was the third longest” does literally mean there were two that were longer but somehow they seemed to imply almost the opposite.

I just did a little research on-line. According to Wikipedia, until 1913 the regular report of the State of the Union, required by the Constitution, was usually given to Congress in writing. It would, of course, be difficult to compare the spoken length of Trump’s speech with any of those. In fact the only list that I found that compares the lengths of the state of the union speeches starts in 1966 with Lyndon Johnson. So as usual we are only given part of the story by the news media.

In comparing speech lengths since 1966, Clinton had the two longest State of the Union speeches: 1:28 in 2000, and 1:24 in 1995.

Last night Trump’s was 1:20. So yes it was nearly as long as Bill Clinton’s two longest speeches. Trump’s first speech last year, technically not a State of the Union, was one hour exactly.

Continuing the comparison, Clinton had the next two longest: one that was 1:18 in 1999 and one that was 1:16 in 1998. In fact all of his were each over an hour long! The next one down was all the way back in 1967 when Lyndon Johnson spoke for 1:11. His others were around 40-50 minutes. The next one down was Obama in 2010 for 1:09. Four of his were each over an hour long. Most of the other presidents on the list spoke for about 35-50 minutes. 

If you’re interested in reading more of this stimulating topic ;-) here is a link to the sites referred to here:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/sou_minutes.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_the_Union