ABC wins, President Obama will not pre-empt Lost premiere with State of the Union

My charming commenter jles in the last post notes the Robert Gibbs exchange in today’s White House press conference in which he promises that Lost fans need not worry about a February 2nd State of the Union from President Obama delaying us all from finding out what happens to Hurley in the season six premiere. Via Fox News’s White House blog:

Fans of the television show ‘Lost’ have no fear.   The White House does not plan to schedule the President’s first State of the Union address on the same night as the premiere of the popular ABC series.

“I don’t foresee a scenario in which millions of people that would hope to finally get some conclusion in ‘Lost’ are preempted by the President,” said Press Secretary Robert Gibbs Friday.

No sign yet if American Idol will suffer the fate of being pre-empted, or if Fox TV will make the awful, clash-of-civilizations-losing decision not to broadcast the State of the Union. But have no fear, Lost-ies – your Dharma Initiative-stamped jugs of ranch dressing are on the way, same time, same place, just make sure your torso doesn’t get crushed beneath the blast door this time.

Anyways, as dear Alex Pareene (who, WTF, why don’t you take off the rest of Friday and READ EVERYTHING HE’S EVER WRITTEN) notes over at The Awl, where Mr. Alex Balk concocted a clever way to give me lots of traffic, it is true, the State of the Union does not need to be annual, nor does it need to be a speech. However, the convention has grown that we do it that way. But unless Alex is proposing that we switch to delivering the State of the Union on the White House website with a slide show of Blingees, I think tradition serves the Republic rather well.

PS – Props to whoever at The Awl proposed that ABC pre-empt the Republican reply with the Lost Final Season premiere. Of course, if this year’s reply is anything like last year’s ‘Bobby Jindal vs. the Volcano’ flop, they may actually be doing the GOP a favor.