Why Boycotting the State of the Union Address Is a Bad Idea

Every year in America the State of the Union is a speech given by the President to offer a summary of how the year has been going. It's taking place this week and some politicians are already threatening to boycott the speech and host their own political rally instead. A few weeks ago some unreasonably angry politicians on the other side decided to do the same thing by hosting their own sad Super Bowl halftime show in protest of "foreigner" Bad Bunny being the headliner. Both are terrible ideas.

The close-minded belief that if you disagree with something, the only alternative is to host your own thing instead ends up creating even more division. It also minimizes what is actually important. At a time when there is far too much media coverage of things done by the President that really don't matter, such as what color he paints Air Force One, or what he thinks about Olympics athletes who criticize him or why he's angry at the host of the Grammy's. Random rants on Truth Social about hurt egos are NOT significant or newsworthy.

What the President says during the State of the Union address, or the administration's moves to curtail the power of the EPA to protect our environment or actual stories about policy changes or stories of rampant corruption ARE significant and deserve attention as well as scrutiny and fact checking. In other words, it is not something politicians (or the rest of us) should plan to skip or ignore.

If anyone is going to boycott anything, may I suggest instead that they start with stories from once credible news sources like Newsweek that offer headlines like this: People Can’t Quite Believe the Donald Trump Photo Nicki Minaj Just Posted (story not linked - obviously).