SOTU? No. SO 3, but bring a date of the opposite party

“[The President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information on the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient….” Article II, Sec. 3, U.S. Constitution

George Washington, rightfully as first president, gave the first State of the Union speech.

“The recent accession of the important state of north Carolina to the Constitution of the United States (of which official information has been received), the rising credit and respectability of our country, the general and increasing good will toward the government of the Union, and the concord, peace, and plenty with which we are blessed are circumstances auspicious in an eminent degree to our national prosperity,” said President Washington in the second sentence of his speech, where many presidents who have followed that first chief executive should have stopped right at that spot and said: “The state of our Union is (fill in the blanks — good, strong, medium well, loathsome, Baroque, Klangarbenmelodie and so forth.)

Thomas Jefferson, the “Second Cousin of Our Country,” decided that with the postal service established by Benjamin Franklin he could just mail the report into Congress. Many presidents followed, not knowing that Congress promptly threw Jefferson’s correspondence in the garbage can.

It wasn’t until Woodrow Wilson, who was better known as the “Great-great-great Grandfather of Our Country,” that presidents once again began making verbal reports to Congress and the nation which later became named “SOTU.”

The opposing parties began presenting a response to the SOTU without an audience and on television in 1966 when the mercurial Richard Nixon, also known as the “Dirty Little Half-Nephew-Third Removed of Our Country” gave his first State of the Union address. The opposing party at that time was called “Democrats.” This year the opposing party will be known as “Republicans.” But wait. Not only are Americans in for the treat of watching the president give the SOTU and the Republicans a response, but the Republicans who are members of what is known as the “Tea Party” will also give a SOTU response.

Yes. This year, perhaps this year only, some say hopefully, the nation will be treated to the peculiarity of the SOTU given by Barack Obama, known as “First Kenyan of Our Country,” the Republican response delivered by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the “First Cheese Head of Our Country,” and for the Tea Party, Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota, the “First Psychopathic Ex-daughter-in-law of Our Country.”

America is a big country, with big dreams and big appetites and big debts and has big knees which can be broken if we don’t pay some of our debts soon by a very big man named Vito “the Riged Noodle” Rigatoni. That is why we have now grown from a SOTU to a SO 3.

And, surprise. Tonight will also perhaps begin a new tradition of “Congressional Date Night.” This is a spectacle where members of one party will ask a member of another party to sit with them during the SOTU, uh SO3. It is kind of legislative version of “Sadie Hawkins Day.”

One can only imagine what our “Founding Fathers” would say of all that today surrounds the address by the president to Congress, so mandated so long ago by the Constitution of our United States?

One wonders if they might say a word that includes the use of “mother?”