Claptrap
This is the part of the State Of The Union where a President with a popularity of 28% introduces invited people who have actually done something, so that the audience will applaud with real fervor.
While “claptrap” is currently defined as “pretentious but insincere language” it originally described something injected into a performance to guarantee applause, literally a “trap” to capture “claps”. The last six SOTU speeches have been examples of both definitions.
Update: If you care, here are the transcripts of what the Shrubbery read and Senator Webb’s response.
[If you go quickly you will see that in the caption on the picture of Senator Webb says: “Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, whose son is serving in Vietnam, beat Republican George Allen in November’s elections.” I guess CNN has fired all of their fact checkers and editors who know the lad is in Iraq, not Vietnam.]
2 comments
The Freudian caption has been corrected, but The Biomes Blog has a screen capture with the Vietnam slip.
Based on the time stamp, that must have been the change at 3AM. They have been messing up a lot lately, so I have a feeling they kept the IT people and fired the liberal arts grads during the last purge.