Back

Well, I'm back from The Burning The Man. I was a little bit in suspense coming back, since I hadn't had access to any media whatsoever, and lots of crazy stuff can happen in a week (for example, Katrina happened during Burning Man--so when my friends got back from it, there was this whole crazy "Um, New Orleans was destroyed while you were gone" talk). But alas, things seemed to have been churning on like normal.

About the speech tonight, I will say that I side with Matt Yglesias with regards to the heckling issue:

Personally, I sort of liked Rep Joe Wilson’s idea of introducing British-style heckling to the halls of congress; totally disrespectful and out of step with American tradition, true, but their tradition is better. Unfortunately, Wilson was also lying about the point at issue and will thereby set back the cause of heckling by decades.

I would add that I think there probably used to be a fair bit of heckling back in the old days, when Congress behaved more or less like a country bumpkin version of the Drones Club.

Also, I think this wins for best description of what went down as the heckling was going on:

All eyes turned in the South Carolina Republican's direction -- including Obama's, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's and Vice President Joe Biden's.

Wilson, looking agitated, leaned forward and began tapping away at his BlackBerry, as if he were Googling up proof that the president had, in fact, lied.

"Shame on you!" shouted someone from the Democratic side. "Throw him out!" shouted someone else. First Lady Michelle Obama, seated behind and above Wilson, seemed to mouth a drawn-out "damn" at the scene unfolding before her.

That's pretty good.