I had one of those nights last night.  I came home from a meeting, all pumped up and ready for the SOTU, and the internet was out.  They've been rewiring the whole house for the last two weeks, with no end in sight, and the place basically looks like the guy's apartment in the movie Brazil.  I just wish Robert DeNiro would swoop in and fix it, rather than the dude with no teeth and a "Get Baked" T-shirt.  Until then, it's all on me.  Jake is hopeless.  Really.  Girls: don't fall for it.  You'll regret it for the rest of your life.

I missed the moment.  I'm just now getting round to reading last night's SOTU — I've watched snippets of it on CNN as well for context. I haven't bothered to read much commentary — I've been too busy all day at work — but I have to say, I was pretty impressed.  Obama didn't even break a sweat over Scott Brown and the Teabaggers on the lawn with their pitchforks, effigies, and misspelled signage.

And to my surprise he did indeed slip in a promise to "work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they gay love".  He didn't say "gay love," but that's what he meant.  And it's true America: we gay love you.

A cursory survey of the gay bloggerati (or gloggerati, as the in-crowd calls it) shows that they're on the whole underwhelmed by the shout-out.  We ain't no holla-back girls, but we do like big Copacabana type show-stoppers, and Obama really kinda slipped this one right past the censors.  Now, the proper way to have gone about it is like so...


But what I liked about how he did it — though it may have seemed too subtle to some — was that the short mention, which garnered enthusiastic applause from at least half the chamber, was embedded in a broader message about rights and responsibilities...

We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we're all created equal, that no matter who you are or what you look like, if you abide by the law you should be protected by it, if you adhere to our common values you should be treated no different than anyone else.

...that assumed and played to Americans' sense of "decency and strength."  What I liked about it, in other words, was how very modest it felt.

Watch the speech, if you didn't.  There are moments of deep, heavy silence from the chamber that are unusual for such a lot of braying asses.  Moments where they almost seem... shamed?  Humbled?  Half-human?

I'm probably imagining it, but if it didn't restore my faith in the process, it did restore a bit of my faith in Obama's decency and strength. 

I guess I'm just a sucker for understatement.