POSTSCRIPT: It was a nothing speech. Clichéd, abstract, predictable--every sentence worked at and struggled with. The encomiums are coming in now, testifying to the ritual pieties of the press. But even here, among people desperate to say something nice, they're grasping. ("That he was willing to sound so somber on his day of celebration tells us many things at once," is an example, by Nancy Gibbs in Time, of the blather.) Something went wrong. (He even got the number of people who've taken the oath wrong. Sheesh.) Maybe he did actually write it himself--and in the end clutched and gave up. After all, he had the absolute attention of the world, and used only 20 minutes. Or maybe he's just lowering expectations.
P.P.S: Obama may be the 44th president, but he is the 43rd person to be president. Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms.
TODAY'S EARLIER POST
This is the most important day of a presidency. It's the emotional high point. You're not going to do better than this. It's the moment when you have the best chance to impress an image, a phrase, a sensation on the public.
You get an absolute pass, too: The media lays it on thick. All inaugurals are history before our eyes, the start of a new this and that, a great day in a great country. (Notably, the inaugural blah blah has spread to other countries. The Guardian offers a particularly excruciating example today: "Today a magic spell will be performed. A man who 12 weeks ago was a mere political candidate will be transformed with the incantation of a few words...into...even the embodiment, of the most powerful nation on earth." Oy.)
Every new administration knows this and tries to capitalize on it--hence the Obama administration's expenditure of $125 million.
The standard is the Kennedy inaugural. Nobody's done better since: It seemed to be a picture of a torch actually being passed. No inaugural address has been so often quoted.
Continue reading at newser.com
It's easy to be a critic sitting in a bull---- pulpit , isn't it...?
After wasting my time reading this nothing article, I was never more convinced of the rightness of my theory.
Heilemann: Obama’s Spare Inaugural Rhetoric Signals Strategic Mastery
1/21/09 at 12:07 AMComment 6Comment 6Comments
Barack Obama’s election against daunting odds was a testament to many things, but not least his remarkable capacity to rock the mike. On Tuesday, he delivered the most watched, most anticipated, most historically significant speech of his life in front of a crowd so massive and so joyous that it took your breath away. Immediately beforehand came the swearing-in, which was a sublime thing, engendering even in his critics and partisan adversaries a feeling of national pride — and providing his fans with a rush of satisfaction and and jolt of pure exhilaration.
Yet the speech that followed was less than thrilling in itself, perhaps by design. Its structure was formal, classical, the substance largely abstract. There were no anecdotes or narratives, personal or otherwise. There were few rhetorical flourishes, no gratuitous bids for Barletts. The language was spare, at times even pedestrian — telling Americans that "we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America," for example.
And though the speech was by no means pessimistic, its optimism was balanced by a cold-eyed realism — and plenty of hard talk about not taking short cuts, a crisis brought on by greed and irresponsibility, and a collective failure to make hard choices....
With Obama, we definitely will get action
rather than bullshit speechifying.
Mr. Wolff, as a journalist," you are supposed to appreciate brevity and simplicity. I hope you got the previous paragraph.
President Obama
In his Inaugural Address, President Obama gave Americans the clarity and the respect for which they have hungered.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.html?8dpc
I heard hope that American will overcome Bush's destruction. I heard courage and a call for unity to face the hardships ahead. I heard willingness to hew to the law no matter what dangers we face ,
I heard a recognition of America's real history , not the censored one.. I heard determination to make good America's potential together
I heard my own heart break with the relief of being released from the darkness where it hid from Bush's program of war & torture in my name.
Maybe you need to put on your "listening" ears, Michael
Impossible...sadly.
His "Mad Men" era is over.