obamathon!!

i am so late to the blog-posting-about-the-inauguration party! i better get going...

so first off, let me just say... BLACK PRESIDENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! awesome.

secondly, let me state, officially, for the record, that once i sat down to watch the proceedings at about 10AM yesterday, i became super pissed that i had bailed on going down to DC. i recant all of my reasons from the second post, and revert back to the first post, ex-post facto, section 5-d, paragraph 2. i am a SUCKER! but whatever. wasn't in the cards, as they say. i just want everyone to know that my punk ass stands corrected. and i totally would've tore up that neighborhood ball! if they had let me on the stage to dance with the obamas during "signed, sealed, delivered" i totally would have busted a move, all over that piece, not just in a big clump like all those people that they did let up there to dance like idiots. they should've auditioned them at least a little before they let them up there. did you guys see that??? it's stevie wonder dude! black president! let's cut loose, for heaven's sake!

but i get ahead of myself.

my intention had been to blog throughout the day, in a sort of running diary fashion, a la the sports guy. however, i was too busy intermittently sobbing and running around the apartment with joy and also i don't yet have my super amazingly awesome macbook that i will have in a few weeks, so it would've been kinda hard to running-blog, since the TV is in the other room and all. so i just made sure the kleenex were nearby and then settled in for the broadcast.

i first started to well up a bit when the motorcade headed for the capitol building. i was like, dude! this is it...

then when he came out to the stage i really got emotional, which was accentuated by aretha's rendition of "my country 'tis of thee" it got me to thinking, because we used to sing that song when i was in preschool, after the pledge of allegiance, and i thought back to what it was like to be a kid and have absolutely no conception of race and inequality and real suffering. and then to have grown up without a sense that something like yesterday could happen in my lifetime, let alone aretha franklin's lifetime... well... i just was floored all over again. it felt a little bit new again, you know? a little bit innocent and hopeful and stuff. i know you know.

that's the thing that kinda irked me about the commentators, from every channel- no one was innocent in this regard- they seemed far more interested in talking hypothetically about what obama has to do now, the economic situation, the middle east, etc... and sure, that is all very important stuff, duly noted in obama's excellent speech, but at that moment, during the run-up to the inauguration itself, and as the camera panned around at all the faces in the crowd, young and old, of all races and ethnicities, all the civil rights leaders who fought with their lives, who watched their friends and family die because of racial hatred and ignorance, i felt the only story for that moment was of the historic significance of this man as an elected official to the highest office of the United States. as one commentator finally put it, much later on in the evening, obama was taking the oath of office to go and govern from a building that was built by the hands of slaves. and not very long ago at all, really.

i know everyone wants so badly to "get over" race issues in this country, and i could go on for hours about that idea, but for this purpose i will say that downplaying the significance of barack obama as our first black president is not the way to go about that. and no, in four months, when the issue is economics, or the issue is war, or the issue is whatever else, the most significant note will not be that barack obama is our nation's first black president. but yesterday, it was the most important thing. and people like brian williams, and tom brokaw, dudes i expect to KNOW THIS really pissed me off by yammering on, in speculation of things that we cannot possibly know yet. i think they probably thought that it would be wrong to not treat obama exactly as they would have treated any other president-elect about to be sworn in, but this time was different. for the first time, it was different. and they shoulda recognized...

anyhow. i have to end my inaugural reflections there, but suffice to say, it was, in my opinion, the greatest day in american history thus far, and i am so happy to have been alive to see it, and so proud to have been a part of it!