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The Daily Dose/January 21, 2009
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
   
This will surprise you, but today's notes from around the Human Experience focus mainly on the inaugural!...Plus Gabriela Montero is the Column Four Foto!
A GOOD START: The America President Obama has taken over governing is like a football team at halftime. This team started the game heavily favored but took its lumps in the first half and finds itself not only trailing at the half, but wondering exactly what the hell is going on here.
But Not A Great Start: What Team America needed yesterday was not a dissertation on the technical requirement of how to get back in the game, but a rousing speech appealing to Team America's highest nature.
We got the former. President Obama, despite having just been inaugurated, at times sounded like he was still campaigning, and he came off more as a teacher giving a lesson than a leader looking to inspire.
Hip, Hip, Hooray: Obama let it be known early he wasn't going to urge us to win one for the Gipper:
Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many…
Dry, Technical Matter: President Obama followed with this cheery tidbit:
Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices…
Good Gravy: Now, that is certainly true, but not the inspiring message we were hoping for and by now the entire country is rending garments and wailing in the streets. This was, and we hope this choice of words doesn't become too ironic, depressing.
FunFact: We are not presidential scholars but - like you no doubt have - we have read every presidential inaugural. And this one was good.
But it wasn't great. It wasn't a speech for the ages. Our own personal opinion is that an inaugural speech that includes the words "gross domestic product" is a little too specific and a little too technical.
God, You're Hard To Please: There wasn't a "With malice for none, with charity for all" or "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" in there, though this line:
This is both the price and the promise of citizenship…
was memorable. In our opinion, the best of the address.
USA! USA! USA!: What Team America really needed, wanted and craved - and what we were on the edge of our seats waiting to hear - was a rousing halftime speech that inspired us to play through pain and not to mind the brick walls we are going to have to run through over the next few years. We wanted, deserved, words that would live down the ages, or at least be equal to the moment. Words we could remember and take solace in when we're selling pencils on the street corner, because this mess is going to get worse before it is going to get better.
Apropos Of Nothing Whatsoever: Following is one of our favorite inaugural quotes. It's from the first President Bush, which is funny because the first President Bush hasn't really gone down as one of history's great thinkers. But he did deliver one of our favorite Inaugural lines:
We meet on democracy's front porch, a good place to talk as neighbors and as friends…
Had it been accompanied by a splendid presidency might well be remembered today.
Can We Get Back On Message Here? The Obama Administration got off to a rocky start when the new President and Chief Justice John Roberts teamed up to munch the oath of office. This was funny because the oath is only 35 words long, all of them familiar and none of them particularly difficult. And they had over three months to practice!
Simply The Best: Aretha Franklin and the Marine Band, two of the very best in the world at what they do - performing America was, frankly, as good as the Human Experience can offer. We sort of almost wept, we found it that moving.
The commentators on the Associated Press feed weren't impressed though, saying the inaugural appealed to everyone, from "low culture to high culture, Aretha Franklin to Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Anthony McGill and Gabriela Montero" the quartet who also performed at the inaugural.
What The Hell's Going On Here? The invocation was tedious, too. Do men of the cloth get paid by the word now? We thought they took vows of brevity or something like that. Not only that, Rev. Warren looks like a JV baseball coach with that goatee.
Speaking Of Rambling: What in the hell was alleged poet Elizabeth Alexander thinking? Listening to her offering - which she no doubt spent more time on than we spent on this column - was tedious and later re-reads weren't much better.
God, Lighten Up, Will You: The following line, at the end, was really good, though:
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.
Cause The Walls Were Shaking, The Earth Was Quaking: Plus, it should be noted we've never had an ear for anything more poetic than rock lyrics anyway.
Oh Yeah: California Senator Diane Feinstein was a gracious and elegant host.
General Hospital: Senator Ted Kennedy, evidently unable to handle the coloreds finally taking power, had a seizure and rested overnight in the hospital.
Nautilus 90 North: On this date, in 1954, the USS Nautilus (SSN 571) was launched in Groton, Connecticut. This means someone, in this case First Lady Mamie Eisenhower, broke a bottle of champagne across the bow and the ship slid into the water. Nautilus would not actually be commissioned until the following January and in August, 1958 would become the first ship to reach the North Pole. She was decommissioned in 1980.
Thought For The Day: In the orderly transfer of power, we celebrate the unity that keeps us free. Richard Nixon, First Inaugural Address.
Answers To The Last Trivia Questions: Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher was the chief US negotiator for the Algiers Accords. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first President of the United States inaugurated on January 20, when he was inaugurated for the second of his four terms in 1937.
Today's Stumper: How many presidential oaths of office have not been administered by Chief Justices of the United States Supreme Court? - Answer next time!
Comments? Recipes? Complaints? Email the Writer's Shack here!
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