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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

The good....the bad...and the ugly
Posted by Jill | 7:45 PM
The Good:

The speech. I suppose the punditocracy wanted something with the kinds of crescendoes to which we've become accustomed when listening to Barack Obama speak. I myself thought he ended somewhat flatly. However, Barack Obama's first speech as the 44th President of the United States (and oh, how sweet that sounds) struck precisely the right tone as he prepares to tackle the horrendous problems left him by his predecessor. It was a far feistier speech than I had expected to hear today. It made absolutely clear that there's a new sheriff in town. It smacked George W. Bush around soundly to about as much an extent as it's good form to do when the man is sitting right behind you. It was the sober speech of a leader taking on a huge task. It was the direct and frank speech of a President who doesn't try to pretend that he's the big daddy who will take care of everything and all we need to do is stuff ourselves with more big-screen TVs and SUVs. It takes some stones to do what Obama did today, and makes me wonder if perhaps I was wrong...that perhaps all this reaching out was to give him the room he needed to read George W. Bush the riot act today as firmly as he could with the man within spitting distance. Whether this extends to holding the Bush Junta accountable remains to be seen, but this new President is clearly nobody's patsy. He made clear today that there is much work to do and we ALL must shoulder our share of the load. What we saw today was a leader.

The Bad:

Rick Warren, who hijacked the inauguration of a president of a secular nation in which religious people are free to practice their religion to deliver the highest Christian prayer and invoke the divinity of Joshua of Nazareth. This huckster snake oil salesman was even more appalling than I expected him to be, taking it upon himself to claim this country, and this inauguration, for his own particularly hateful flavor of Christianity. I watched this inauguration today with a multiethnic group of co-workers including someone who went to Catholic school as a child, a young woman from China, a Muslim woman from Egypt, and a woman from India. And we all concurred that Warren's benediction was highly inappropriate for the occasion. This is NOT a "Christian nation", no matter how much wingnuts like Rick Warren want to tell us it is. Warren is Jerry Falwell in a Hawaiian shirt, he is a disgrace, and he should never, ever be allowed to an official event in this Administration again.

The Ugly:

No, I'm not referring to Michelle Obama's outfit, though I seem to be the only person on the face of the earth to think "What in God's name is she wearing?" And I'm not referring to Aretha Franklin's hat, for which I have been soundly smacked around and condescended to for this opinion by people who think I, a sometime collector of Edwardian and 1920's hats, don't understand the meaning of hats in African-American churches. I'm referring to the angry, sullen, spoiled-brat countenance of the man who until noon today called himself the President. Sasha Obama showed more patience with the business of pomp and circumstance than this sixty-plus-year-old man did. Of course it couldn't be easy for this spoiled rich old money brat from Kennebunkport to watch the brown-skinned son of a Kenyan father and a proto-hippie mother pummel his entire eight-year term in front of the entire world. Still, you'd think even this particular case of arrested development to hold it together until he got the hell out of town and hopefully out of our lives forever.

Tomorrow the real work starts, but for now....


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Anonymous Anonymous said...
Yes, I thought Michelle's dress was a little weird, but she did carry it off. And yes, I agree with you , as did Barack judging by the tensing muscles in his jaw, that Warren was a big mistake. What a narcissitic idiot.

And Chimpy was definitely peeved. Did anyone else notice that he tried to leave while Obama was still shaking hands? And that Obama had to fight his way around him to lead the procession out? Spoiled brat.
1/21/09, 8:55 PM  
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