Obama's "acting alone" fallacy.

"The idea that you're 'alone' unless you're being directed by the government strikes me as dehumanizing and almost abusive."

"Richard Blanco's inaugural poem for Obama is a valiant flop."

"'One Today' has some fine lines, but writing good poetry for a grand national celebration is an impossible feat."

Justice Scalia was wearing his Sir Thomas More hat.

Did you notice?

Beyoncé lip-synched.

Do you care? Is there some authenticity issue here that matters? If so, why?

(Yo Yo Ma bow-synched at the 2009 Inauguration.)

Politicians and their wives... chez Drudge.

Right now, at Drudge, at the top of the middle and left columns:



The message of the juxtaposition seems to be: Powerful political wives dominate their husbands. Or: Bow down to women, O ye men!

Here's the story about Carla and Nicolas moving to — of all places to avoid taxes — the UK. You know taxes are harsh when England seems like the way out. (Didn't the English rock stars use to move to France to avoid taxes? (Back in the days when The Beatles contributed to the protest-song genre with "Taxman.")

[Nicolas Sarkozy] and his former supermodel third wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy would be likely to settle in an affluent district like South Kensington – so becoming the most high profile Gallic celebrity couple in the city.

But the former president is under investigation for corruption in France, and if he does cross the Channel there will be outrage.

Oh, to be relatively young and super high profile! Carla is waving bye-bye. We'll see what her getaway looks like. (How "Gallic" is Carla Bruni? She was born Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, in Turin, Italy. How coupled is she? She famously cheated on Eric Clapton with Mick Jagger.)

Meanwhile, in America, I've got no criticism of Barack Obama bowing to his wife as he invites her to dance. Or do you think anytime he bows, he calls up the old bowing-to-dictators meme?

"Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of [the words of the Declaration of Independence] with the realities of our time."

The words President Obama had just quoted, in his Inaugural Address, were: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

More from the text of the speech:

For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth.  

God! God is well-represented in this speech. In addition to that "gift from God" (and "their Creator"), there's:

Michelle and Barack Obama look great in the Inauguration morning outfits.

Very nice. Love the blue. Love the matching clasped hands as — we're told — they approach the Episcopal Church. Michelle's checker-patterned coat is made of "silk jacquard based on a necktie fabric." Beautiful!

In church:

... Pastor Andy Stanley from North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Ga., delivered the sermon. He spoke of Jesus washing his disciples' feet and saying "now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you should also watch each other's feet." The president, Pastor Stanley said, should follow that example and "leverage" his power for the benefit of others.

IN THE COMMENTS: Erika notes the typo in the blocked quote, which is from NPR.org:  You should also watch each other's feet. Maybe NPR misheard and didn't get what Jesus was supposedly doing. Some commenters thought Pastor Stanley didn't get what Jesus meant.

Palladian: "The washing of the feet was about humility and service, not about 'leveraging power.'"

Cheryl: "I'm pretty sure Jesus didn't need to leverage his power. Biblical teaching like this is why we don't attend Pastor Stanley's church, which is right down the road from us."

Bago20 reacted: "Nooooooooooooooooooooo! Please don't help anymore."

Maguro had a different problem: "I find it disturbing that even southern preachers are using 'leverage' as a verb these days."

MORE IN THE COMMENTS: I said: "The humble servant image is a little edgy when the President is black." And Palladian said: "The humble servant image is a little edgy when the President is a profligate, arrogant, narcissistic asshole."

"Today, on the national day set aside to honor Dr. King, an African American president will ceremonially begin his second term."

"Like presidents before him, he has had his ups and downs, mistakes and triumphs. There is, to be sure, an element of bigotry among some of his enemies, but in general it has had a kind of cowardly, subterranean quality to it. President Obama was assailed mostly for what his critics thought were wrong policies or judgments. In the end, as always, the final verdict was given at the polls; the president was reelected, and his inauguration will be celebrated today — not quite with the rapturous enthusiasm of four years ago but rather with something resembling blessed normality."

"He then kissed his wife, whom he called 'Sweetie,' and told his daughters, 'I did it.'"

Oath sworn. Video at the link. First thing you see is Chief Justice Roberts walking into the room, and if you're like me, you said, "Don't fuck it up this time."

Does that seem ambiguous? I meant don't screw up the oath again.

Another crude vocalization that emerged from me recently is: "Why is Dana Milbank pooping on the inauguration?'

"All Hostages Dead/Slaughtered in Sahara."

The Drudge headline hangs over from yesterday, even though Barack Obama will be sworn in to his second term in office later this morning. It will be a quiet little affair — a "bare-bones ceremony" to "satisfy the constitutional requirement that the president’s swearing-in take place by noon on the Jan. 20 after an election."

It's January 20th and also a Sunday, so the festivities are delayed until tomorrow.

A White House statement said the only witnesses to [today's] Blue Room ceremony would be family members of the president, including his wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Sasha and Malia.

I fantasize about a President who pares all ceremony down to the bare-bones, eliminates all extravagance, across the board. Take on the humble servant image, be a tightwad for the taxpayers,  maintain a small carbon footprint, and say — implicitly and continually — the work of the President is gravely serious and never-ending. All Hostages Dead/Slaughtered in Sahara.

Was Giglio chosen for the inauguration benediction in order to provide cover for Chuck Hagel?

"An evangelical pastor from Atlanta [Rev. Louie Giglio] announced Thursday that he would not give the benediction at President Obama’s swearing-in ceremony after a sermon he gave on homosexuality in the mid-1990s resurfaced earlier this week."

Suspicion: Giglio was chosen with full knowledge of that sermon and the intention that it would "resurface" and that he would then conspicuously withdraw. This would promote Obama's pro-gay stance and take the heat off Chuck Hagel, who's got an anti-gay remark in his record which the Obama people would like to submerge. It was all planned: the desire for Hagel to become Secretary of Defense, the known problem of his anti-gay remark, the desire to perform a conspicuous expiation, the identification of Giglio as a plausible benediction-giver with an anti-gay remark in his history, choosing Giglio, revealing the old Giglio sermon, Giglio bowing out in a tribute to Obama's rejection of homophobia, Hagel saved by the scapegoat.

I'm not saying I believe this is what happened, and I certainly have no inside knowledge. I'm just noticing the correlations and putting together a hypothesis. Please discuss.

You can pull me back from this suspicion if you make a great case for why else Giglio would have been chosen for this honor. He's a white male, by the way.

"An evangelical pastor from Atlanta announced Thursday that he would not give the benediction at President Obama’s swearing-in ceremony..."

"... after a sermon he gave on homosexuality in the mid-1990s resurfaced earlier this week."

In that sermon, the Rev. Louie Giglio called for Christians to “firmly respond to the aggressive agenda” of some in the gay community and warns that widespread gay marriage ”would run the risk of absolutely undermining the whole order of our society.”

Obama's inauguration poet "tackles 'the intersection of his cultural identities as a Cuban-American gay man.'"

The poet is Richard Blanco, the verb "tackles" comes from Politico, and the quote within the quote is in the Presidential Inauguration Committee press release.

I'm not a poet, but I pay attention to images, and I find the picture of tackling an intersection absurd in a particularly amusing way. Intersection of his cultural identities is also absurd but only in that dry, dreary academic way that makes you want to say to all your children and grandchildren: Do not major in the humanities!

What amuses me about tackling an intersection is that it seems to reveal the author's anxiety about the masculinity of the gay poet. Why make us picture a football move? Admittedly, the verb tackle originally meant to equip (a ship) with the necessary furnishing and then to harness (a horse), and only later "To grip, lay hold of, take in hand, deal with; to fasten upon, attack, encounter (a person or animal) physically." So says the OED. But it's all pretty damned macho.

There's no Blanco poetry at the link, but there is a description of an essay "Afternoons as Endora" from a collection "My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them."

“According to [my grandmother], I was a no-good sissy — un mariconcito — the queer shame of the family,” Blanco wrote. “And she let me know it all the time: Why don’t we just sign you up for ballet lessons? Everyone thinks you’re a girl on the phone — can’t you talk like a man? I’d rather have a granddaughter who’s a whore than a grandson who is a faggot like you.”

Go here for a little more of the writing, including Blanco's description of dressing up like Endora and watching "Bewitched" on TV:

Together we'd turn Mrs. Kravitz into a chihuahua, Derwood into a donkey, or Uncle Arthur into a chair. We were unstoppable....

I was a helpless and scared child, powerless against my grandmother, while Endora was a mighty witch with limitless powers. Unlike Samantha, her foolish daughter, she was a witch who wasn't afraid of being a witch, and used her magic to get her way or enact revenge every time she had a chance.

A fantasy of power. Suitable for a presidential inauguration.

AND: More on Blanco:

"Since the beginning of the campaign, I totally related to [Obama's] life story and the way he speaks of his family, and of course his multicultural background,” Mr. Blanco said... “There has always been a spiritual connection in that sense. I feel in some ways that when I’m writing about my family, I’m writing about him."...

Cynics might say that in picking a Latino gay poet, Mr. Obama is covering his political bases....

Aw, come on. People observing the normal things that happen in politics don't deserve to be called "cynics." OED defines "cynic" as:

A person disposed to rail or find fault; now usually: One who shows a disposition to disbelieve in the sincerity or goodness of human motives and actions, and is wont to express this by sneers and sarcasms; a sneering fault-finder.

Oh, what the hell. I'll accept the label. With politicians, we should be cynics. By the way, "cynic" comes from the Greek for dog-like (which you can sort of see in the word currish, which echoes in churlish).

"Barack, wouldn't it be funny if, after all of this, you got to be President..."

"... tried to do the job, working hard at it, trying to be a good President, and you wake up one morning and you think: I hate my job. Because doesn't this happen to people all the time? You get the job, you start to do it, and then you realize: I hate it!"

Etta James vs. Beyonce.

"I can't stand Beyonce! She's going to get her ass whooped... You know your president, the one with the big ears — he ain't my president — he had that woman singing for him at his Inauguration. How dare Beyonce sing my song that I been singing forever!"

***

Here's the audio of the recent rant.

And then there this audio — of perfection reached, long ago.

A paean to the inauguration: "Hallelujah... for being smart again. And sexy again. And optimistic again."

This is one of those Maira Kalman illustrated essays in the NYT. I don't want this much sugar in my morning coffee. So let me just say... "sexy"? Is it the government that is sexy now or the people who are enthusiastic about the government who are sexy? Or are you saying you feel sexually attracted to Barack Obama? Or do you just think all the sexy people are liberals or — no one could possibly be this silly — all the liberals are sexy people?

So those are some questions for you. Now, I will answer one question that you raise:

And a woman named Renata asked: "Why [take the oath] on the Bible? Why not on the Constitution?" And I think that is a Very Good Question.

It's a very easy question. The President must swear to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." There would be no safeguard against lying if you swore on the document you were swearing to uphold. If he doesn't intend to respect the document, he has his hand on a document he doesn't respect.

I'd love to read this Krauthammer piece on the inaugural address...

... but the Townhall.com webpage is an insanely cluttered, flashing, ugly mess. And that's not even counting the pop-ad that wouldn't go away even after repeated clicking on "close" and "x." I'm able to make it a little better if I reduce the print size to the point where it's uncomfortable to read, but then it's uncomfortable to read.

Ugh. I finally found the "print" button to clear away the garbage. Okay:

Fascinating speech. It was so rhetorically flat, so lacking in rhythm and cadence, one almost has to believe he did it on purpose. Best not to dazzle on Opening Day. Otherwise, they'll expect magic all the time.

The most striking characteristic of Barack Obama is not his nimble mind, engaging manner or wide-ranging intellectual curiosity. It's the absence of neediness. He's Bill Clinton, master politician, but without the hunger.

Interesting. I've been wondering why Obama didn't write a better speech. So the theory is, he deliberately wrote a lackluster speech? Hmmm. Didn't want to dazzle on opening day? He's easing into this President thing?

I don't care that much what Obama did for the big inaugural show, but I've been unimpressed with the action since then. In particular, yesterday, I read the headline that he was closing Guantánamo, and I wanted to blog about it, but then I read the article and couldn't really tell that he was. It felt like trickery. He's setting a goal, way out in the future, a year from now, and he has no information about how he's going to deal with the remaining detainees.

But Krauthammer would have me believe that Obama is just so cool — he's not needy, like that psychological mess, that flashing webpage of a man, Bill Clinton:

Obama will take [adulation], but he can leave it too. He is astonishingly self-contained. He gives what he must to advance his goals, his programs, his ambitions. But no more. He has no need to.

But how do we know it's not all as fake as Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman string-synching in the icy air? He gives what he must to advance his goals... but what are his goals? To pull off the impression of a presidency? Why did he give the information that he was closing Guantánamo, without any substance about how he'd do it? I don't see that as just enough. I see it as too much and not enough.

Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman faked it.

Oh, they say they had to because it was so cold.

The conditions raised the possibility of broken piano strings, cracked instruments and wacky intonation....

Well, hell, they knew it was going to be January. If these candyass classicists can't play in the cold, they should have hired some musicians who can.

***

So we were listening to recorded music when the clock hit noon, the constitutional moment for the President to be sworn in! Then, he was sworn in and that might have been fake and there was a second of that too.

IN THE COMMENTS: Gahrie said:

It was real before it was fake, and after all isn't that all that really matters?

... [A]fter the campaign the president ran, can we really be surprised?

Jason said:

This is amazing. Just yesterday I heard the music show on NPR praising the musicians for their amazing skill "people are still talking about it." God I hate them. You think they're giving you useful information and it turns out to be junk

hdhouse said:

between Ma and Perlman they are using about 5million in instruments that do not like cold. unlike Mr. Bush, they "fake it" for a reason.

I'm fine with them keeping their precious objects out of the cold, but let them keep their precious bodies off the stage. And, yeah, they are different from Bush. Bush was President, and as such, he had to perform, whether the circumstances challenged the limits of his capacity or not. They did not have an obligation. They received an invitation do something they knew they couldn't do, and they accepted it knowing it exceeded their capacity and they would fake it.

Paul Zrimsek said:

Folks, give it up for Milli Violinni!

Simon said:

Still, look on the bright side: Obama hadn't been inaugurated yet, so they sneaked it in under the wire before the trickery was over.

LOL. Very funny! I knew those words would come back to bite me. Let it be known that I am on trickery alert.

Leland said:

Fake but accurate.

Bearing said:

It's not that they didn't play in the cold. It's that they faked playing in the cold. That's just cheesy.

We can give the new president his own super-secure Blackberry, but we can't put four musicians in a heated tent with cameras?

And — considering that $170 million was being spent on the big show — project holograms of them outdoors.

Palladian said:

It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.

Tina Brown says Tuesday was "9/11 in reverse."

"[H]e draped a long arm to gather me in between himself and his even taller vice president and easefully lit up for the camera. I felt safer and calmer than I have for eight years."

Ugh.

"Are Americans really on the ground? Do we perceive ourselves that way? Or — are we really that way, even if we don't feel it?"

Marc Ambinder parses the inaugural address.