"Jed Clampett, meet Josiah Bartlet"

President Obama delivered his second State of the Union address Tuesday night, his first address to the nation since Republicans won a landslide election and regained control of the House of Representatives. Yet despite all of the important food for thought President Obama fed the American citizenry, one headline seemed to top them all.

Since the custom of an evening broadcast of the annual State of the Union began in 1947, audiences have looked forward to the rather amusing divisiveness of their elected officials. You know, in lieu of the usual scripted drama that would normally be airing at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday evening.

But this year, "Jed Clampett" and "Josiah Bartlett" - that is, congressional Republicans and Democrats - decided to shake hands and halt the gunfire by agreeing to sit next to one another during the speech, rather than clustered together in the usual juvenile fashion.

In fact, this was such big news, that CNN found it relevant enough to take a poll on the "issue." And what did they find, you might ask? Seventy-two percent of Americans believe this is a good idea, while 22 percent are opposed to the concept.

Now, I realize that CNN loves to put out polls for the sake of doing so, and I'm further aware of the fact that Americans love to tease a good shit-show (watching the wave of partisan ovations is always fun), but 22 percent of people really don't believe two people with differing party affiliations and political views should sit next to each other? Is courtesy and respect really such a foreign concept to the general American public?

When it comes down to it, it seems silly that CNN (and every other news organization that reported on this so heavily) should put so much emphasis on such a high school type of topic. Any partisan feelings within Congress are as much perpetuated by the mass media as they are by the people within these chambers. No one needs to glorify the simple act of sitting down next to your colleague during a speech as being the "turn of the tide" for American politics. Get a grip.

And sure enough, when the time came for President Obama's speech, the partisan applause continued nonetheless. Only instead of a neat and organized display of partisanship, it was scattered throughout the sea of egotism. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) popped out a forced smile-turned-angry-grin as she watched John Boehner (R-OH) sit in the chair that she once called her own, and John McCain grimaced at President Obama's declaration that "...no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love." And do I even need to mention Michelle Bachman's (...T-MN?) out-of-the-blue, gasp-worthy response on behalf of the Tea Party caucus?

It's politics as usual, folks. Move along.