Over the past couple of hundred years, the State of the Union has been enjoyed by pamphlet, radio, TV, and webcast and each and every year, the citizenry has sat avidly awaiting their 'word' to come up on SOTU Bingo or for the bets they made on the average length to be confirmed. So while the drinking and gambling man has plenty to do; it is perhaps dismal to report that the thinking man will be under-utlized. Sadly, the State of the Union speech has been getting dumber and dumber.
State Of The Union Speech is getting dumbererer... [3]
Since James Madison's 1815 Address, the 'linguistic standard' of the State of the Union speech has plunged. As The Guardian noted last year [4], the lowest on record was George H.W. Bush's 1992 address - only just beating Obama's 2011 address for 'dumbest' speech ever. Whether this is representative of the American people as a whole or the lowest common denominator is unclear... Dumb and dumber indeed...
Using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test [5] the Guardian has tracked the reading level of every state of the union
[6]
and the Top 20 (or Bottom 20 we guess) Lowest average readability test scores for the Presidents...
[7]
Via SOTU [8]
And while the President will discuss Inequality in depth, it would seem the "poor" have not been commented on much since the 80s...
[9]
And "Jobs" and "Hope" remain low...
[10]
So - on that note, it's time to drink...
Via @GenOpportunity
[11]
and the thinking and drinking man's game...
The general rules of this game are no different from any other drinking game. A drink is either a shot or a good gulp from a beer (or cider). Different events call for different numbers of drinks and all you do is watch the speech and play along. If all goes well, you'll be unconscious by the time they show the other party's response.
via DrinkingGame.us [12]
[13]
and if you want to play along with the kids... SOTU Bingo!
[14]
Enjoy... full live webcast to follow...