Tuesday, January 20, 2009

President Barack H. Obama

All right, I’m sick of looking at that perimenopause thing myself, even, so I’ll just quickly note that I got over my ire about Rick Warren enough to get excited about the inauguration again, and I did stay home and watch the ceremony, and cried through most of it, though it was hard to be sure exactly why: relief that George’s presidency was ending, distress at how he broke our country, joy at seeing an African-American sworn in as president? All of that.

They said on NPR that President Obama plans to be known as “Barack H. Obama,” and I think I did detect a malicious gleam on Justice Robert’s face when he said “Hussein.” I think he also went too quickly when he told Obama what to say on purpose so that Obama would mess it up, which he did. But it's probably not a bad thing for a president to have a humbling moment now and then.

Question: If you don’t say the oath exactly the way it’s written, are you still really the president? My mother said right after Obama’s fine speech that there are probably Republicans getting ready to sue right this minute.

Fortunately, the thing I was really nervous about went fine: that guy playing the clarinet outdoors in the freezing weather.

P. S. My online news purveyor says it was Roberts who messed up the wording. Obama probably had the oath memorized to make sure it would go smoothly, hence the dueling versions.

3 comments:

Lisa Morin Carcia said...

Hi, Linda! I'm finally catching up on your blog after a few weeks of hecticness (or "hecticity," with the stress on the first "i," which is a word I just made up this minute and would already like to nominate for New Coinage of 2009).

David & I went to The Stranger's inauguration viewing party Tuesday morning at the Triple Door (a nightclub in downtown Seattle). The video feed (but not the audio) cut out just after Rick Warren started to speak, but it was restored before he finished and stayed up through the rest of the broadcast. (Afterwards, Dan Savage got up and said, "We didn't plan to have the video go out during Rick Warren's invocation; it was a 'miracle.'")

Bugwalk said...

I'm jealous that you got to watch the inauguration with Dan Savage! (At first I thought you were going to say you went to The Stranger's inauguration; I was thinking, "Wow, big week for inaugurations!") (P. S. Yay, I remembered my blog password!)

J said...

I'm also (mostly) over my ire. He's done so much this past week that has really pleased me, that I'm more willing to forgive and see him as trying to reach out to all sides.

Even if he had piss poor timing when he did so.