Mom & Me Five Archive

...I have one question: What was Speaker Pelosi sucking?
    Did you notice? She was fine during the early pleasantries, but once Bush began the meat of his speech, Nancy started moving her mouth as though she had something loose in it. A lozenge? A piece of candy? Perhaps successive wavelets of gorge in response to sentence after sentence of Bush's speech?
    I noticed her mobile mouth very early in the speech, possibly at the same time the curious movements began. I didn't say anything, even though these kinds of background glitches are favorite topics of discussion between my mother and me. I wanted to concentrate on the speech.
    Unfortunately, about 15 minutes into the speech my mother said, "What is that woman eating!?!" That was it. My concentration was blown.
    We spent the rest of the speech, most of it, actually, watching and commenting as the woman sucked and shifted whatever her mouth contained. We carefully checked the attendees as the camera panned the audience to see if others were entertaining themselves in the same manner (none were) and speculating on what could possibly be her problem. At one point we thought that perhaps she's had dental work earlier in the day and the local was beginning to wear off. Finally, close to the end of the speech, I said, "I can just imagine what her reaction's going to be when she views the film and notices herself."
    "Don't be so sure," my mother responded. "Maybe that was planned."
    "You mean, a subtle, deliberate political distraction?"
    "Why not?" my mother affirmed. "Politicians have been known to do worse."
    For sure.
    I think I got the gist of the speech from the commentary and the Democratic rebuttal afterwards, and, anyway, I'll read the text in Mom's paper, tomorrow, just to make sure I didn't miss anything.
    Thing is, though, I don't think I've enjoyed watching any State of the Union address quite as much as this one. Nothing like observing political circuses with an Ancient Lightly Demented One!