It was the holding of of a Joint Session of Congress to appease the excessive vanity and massive hubris of Obama and the stridently partisan and venally corrupt Democratic leaders of Congress which was uncouth. For such sessions are rare and reserved for subjects of the greatest import to the WHOLE of the nation, and where the interest of all is clearly made and it is undeniably non-partisan.
THIS JOINT SESSION WAS called for the most petty and partisan politics, and the speech giver himself went out of his way to call ALL OF US LIARS, and to speak in bitterly partisan and divisive language.
That was uncouth.
The most adult and responsible person that night was Joe Wilson.
That is certainly true. The last non-State-Of-The-Union joint session address was President Bush, on 9/20/2001, right after the 9/11 attacks.
That was called so he could present the nation’s plans for responding to the attack, and was completely non-political, contained no attacks on any member of congress, nor any comments on what any of them had said.
Frankly, Congress used to look very dimly as an institution on the idea of the President telling them what to do publicly like that. If Bush had asked for a joint session to discuss the TARP last fall, the Democrats would have said no, just have us come to a meeting in your office.
The last time I saw a joint session used as a political ploy, it was in a hollywood movie, “the contender”, where the President used trickery and deceit to force a direct up-and-down vote during his joint session for his pick to replace the vice president.
In fact, movies like to use joint sessions of congress. Dave used one for Dave (playing the role of a coma-president because he looked like the president) to resign his office and provide evidence of criminal activity for congress, and “The American President”, where Michael Douglass made a joint session speech to push legislation and to attack his presidential candidate opponent — but I think that was actually a State of the Union speech.