President Barack Obama has become known for his reliance upon a teleprompter for all his speeches – whether he’s addressing Congress or speaking to a classroom of school children. Most of the time the tactic is helpful in giving the American people the impression that he is a well-polished speaker. But from time to time, it has been the cause of some embarrassing moments for the President.

One such moment came tonight during Obama’s first State of the Union address. A typo in the President’s speech caused him to refer to his address as the “State of the Onion.”

Unfortunately for the President, this was not a single error, but occurred each time the word ‘union’ appeared in the speech. At one point, he attempted to cite a phrase in the Constitution, expressing our need to work together as Americans to “form a more perfect onion.”

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, who gave the GOP response to the President’s speech, mocked Obama’s mistake. “Many comparisons can be made between former President Jimmy Carter and current President Barack Obama. The first was a peanut farmer. The second, we learned tonight, has aspirations of being an onion farmer.”

The White House quickly issued a statement to the press about the error. The statement read: “We regret the unfortunate oversight that resulted in the President’s use of an incorrect word in his speech. We strive to hold ourselves to a higher standard than that of Microsoft Word’s spell check feature. We have acted quickly and have already dealt with the matter. The speech writer who is responsible for the mistake will retain his job, but has lost his exemption from the health care reform legislation that the President hopes to sign into law later this year.”

A senior aide to the administration indicated that the President recognized his misstatement when it was pointed out to him after the speech. He says that Obama plans to apologize to the American people just as soon as a statement is prepared for him to read.

I.M. Cirius