Ships Passing In The Night

This has got to be THE most ridiculous part of the speech. The PowerPoint in general was poorly made and not needed at all. But this sketch specifically was just immature and entirely inappropriate for the State of the State.

It’s telling that Skelos laughed as if in agreement and Silver just turned away…

I liked the ships related slides. A lot of doom and gloom makes people irritable. Add to that Cuomo’s theatrics as he pandered to NYC about closing upstate juvenile facilities and many folks (including myself) were probably feeling cranky. The passing ships analogy defused the anger. It was amusing. It made folks more receptive to hearing what Cuomo had left to say. I’m not a big Cuomo fan, but he did well with his speech. I’d give it an A-.

BTW, I wonder if this was the first time that folks offended by Cuomo’s joke had ever watched an the SOS? Your standards may be a little too lofty. After seeing quite a few SOSs, your view of what’s acceptable might change a bit.

For example, there was one year when (current jailbird) Tony Seminario decided to tell Mario Cuomo what he thought of something Mario had said — right in the middle of the SOS. Barbs were exchanged. Classy of Tony, eh? Then there was Pataki who used to make snide and sarcastic comments while staring at the Dems while wearing a cockeyed smirk. Not exactly professional, either. Then Spitzer stopped his SOS to try to stir up applause like a cheerleader at a basketball game — for things in his speech that got little or no applause. After all that, Cuomo’s well-received satire of the often dysfunctional relationship between legislative leaders and the governor was pretty tame.