Those Magic Moments

Even though I'm slightly delayed by TiVo and the need to make a few notes as I watch things, I'm gonna try to offer observations as they spill out. Hate me if you want - I'm just another American Liberal who won't avoid admitting it, that nonetheless loves the traditions associated with our Inaugural ceremonies. And so this is what I saw...
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Nothing in the early coverage of the dignitaries milling about surpasses the not-so-subtle irony of Elaine Chao showing up looking fabulous in a mink coat. Now THAT's the sort of message the Bushies want to send to Labor. Power to the people. The powerful people, that is.

Guy Hovis (wearing the worst toupee in DC, which is saying a great deal) sang "Let the Eagle Soar." Please, please someone find out how much Ashcroft gets in royalties for forcing the nation to live through that melodic bludgeoning yet again. Hillary bobbed her head along - now THAT's a bipartisan sharing/doubling of the pain.

Bill Frist's red TN scarf (with the Titans' insignia) is WAY too much. Tom Delay appears to be carrying something between his ass cheeks. "BigTime" Cheney sublty-offered a wink caught on camera before descending to his seat - oh so chilling.

So many fur coats in the crowd. Having grown up in one of the few hundred American families still raising fur-bearing critters, it is an encouraging sign for my relatives. But I'm sure many of those that oppose such trappings (pun intended) of wealth feel it hurts us as nation. Or a species. Either way, I'm sure designers targeting the Elaine Chaos of the world couldn't care less.

Rehnquist descends the stairs to the dais after everyone else. Wow. I think we've all just seen a ghost.

"Richard Bruce Cheney." Who knew he was a Bruce? Not that it matters now, but they should've used that on the campaign trail.

Is Dennis Hastert dsylexic? Given the number of mistakes he made reading the oath to Cheney, one can't help but ponder otherwise. And how many Christian Conservatives out there do you think minded that Cheney's gay daughter, Mary, held the Bible on which he swore his oath? Enquiring minds want to know.

WAIT a minute...Rehnquist is on a VENTILATOR?!! The automated wheezes were a dead giveaway (no pun intended, I think). Still, how can this man deign to remain on the Court with what is so obviously terribly limiting health issues? And then he hobbled from the cold as soon as his duties were done. Rehnquist was a committed and honorable Justice. And we all wish you a complete recovery. But this is the Country's Judicial System you're holding in the balance by trying to feign a command of your faculties. I implore you, kind Sir, think of your legacy.

And so Dubya's speech begins. No going back now. So I'll try my selective best to annotate some of the phraseology, from my thankfully-TiVo'd and underlying-meaning-minded perspective.

- Bush starts in almost immediately with all sorts of hooey, trying to bolster his moment's historical importance. He decries "the shipwreck of communism,""years of repose," and "years of sabbatical." But he completes the shtick with "and then there came a day of fire" - OK, is it just me or was this speechwriter drinking a bit too much merlot while putting the lipgloss on this pig?

- Bush (somewhat threateningly) draws our attention to "the survival of liberty in our land." As in here - the frickin' U.S. of A. Was that "survival" ever really in question until the Bushies began threatening it? Sorry, don't answer that. It's a not entirely rhetorical moment of self-exposure.

- "Some, I know, have questioned the global appeal of liberty." One name, please, Mr. President. Just one. Name for me one person who presented that question. I bet you a ham sandwich you can't come up with even one.

- Talk of "permanent tyranny" and "permanent slavery" follows. Flourishes are part of the game, but who really, honestly, in even the most evil chambers of the world's ugliest gangs has ever talked of either of these insults to humanity as being "permanent." All you linguists out there, please parse the crap out these sections in this speech - I'm a mere amateur. But it almost sounds like a political MadLib to me.

- Crazy segway at a blank moment in Dubya's speech. C-SPAN showed live footage of Jim Jeffords. Then - and I'm completely serious here as a dead-on professional-face-recognizer - Stephen Baldwin (who never got better than his throwaway role in "The Usual Suspects). His brother, Alec, was surely pissed, but Stephen's a not-so-famous-but famously-nutso Bushie. As far as I can tell, Jeffords and Baldwin were nowhere near one another in the seating arrangement. But I sure would've loved to hear the control room coversation leading up to that camera transistion.

- "And one day, this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of the world." Um, so that's supposed to be good imagery? This is a bit premature, but this speech produced some of the clunkiest wordsmithing I've ever heard on such a widely-viewed stage.

- "In deaths that honored their whole lives" - referring to American soldiers killed in Iraq. An absolutely, abhorrently, yucky claim of honorable ends.

- "I ask our youngest citizens to believe the evidence of your own eyes." Hard to tell in retrospect what that's supposed to mean. It was unintentionally bad grammar, one should hope, even if taken in context. But it's still horrendous.

- Bush mentioned the Homestead Act, to which I largely credit my own American ancestry. My great-grandfather came here from Sweden/Norway (a disputed border region near Lillehammer, Norway) and naturalized in the early 1880s. Thanks to the 160 acres the U.S. Government gave him to do so under that Act, my ancesters settled on the farthest-northern slice of Wisconsin at that point settled-by and offered-to immigrants. Yet, to bring it around to the current reference, how the MOTH**FU** does that history justify privatizing Social Security? Bush talks about an "Ownership Society." Here's a thought - try owning up to our $7+Trillion National Debt and the systemic deficits produced as far as the eye can see by cutting income taxes before addressing any other newly-designated "national goals." Lofty historical references are an American tradition, no doubt. But trying to sell a possibly ruinous plan on the well-worn backs of 19th Century immigrants - that's pushing the envelope like I've never seen before in American political gamesmanship or class-warfare. Bush sure does have some balls.

- Not-so Hidden Pro-Life Message O' the Day
"Even the unwanted have worth." OK, you moralist posturers. I implore you - apply that empty sentiment to convicted criminals, the homeless, the poor, or all manner of other less-desirables in our society. The "unwanted" are most emphatically not ONLY the unborn. Just look around you everywhere on a daily basis.

- C-SPAN offered an amazing transistion-camera view over Dubya's shoulder, showing his speech in its 3-ring binder. Seriously-HUGE type with lots of underlining. No cartoons, at least that I could see. But that's not a comment meant to impune his intelligence. It's just amazing to actually see the words laid out as they are before becoming history.

- C-SPAN then showed the first protesters being led away. Three normalish-looking people, nothing overly-rebellious or ready for network re-broadcast. In the background you could hear some echoing chants of dissent. Somewhere out there, Michael Moore's salivating over the footage he (quite probably) alone will present to the American people showing what really happened.

- "Not because history moves forward on the wheels of inevitability. It is human history that move events." Huh? I only wish I'd incorrectly dictated that terrible passage. In this, as in all other sins of this Administration, I think their words should speak for themselves.

- "History has an ebb and flow of Justice." As Bush read that unintentionally ironic line, C-SPAN cut to a shot of DC Police tearing an anti-war banner away from a few vocal protestors. And then an awkward applause break initiated by the pro-Bush crowd forced him to stop. The standard Pro-Bush chant of "Four More Years" began, even though he's already into that term as of yesterday, according to the Constitution. So where might those folks put us on that cycle - ebb or flow? I'm pretty sure of where I think we're headed, but I'd like to hear your opinion when you stop chanting...

- "We are ready for the greatest achievements in freedom." As if. So we're to believe that the world ain't seen nothing yet? Please stop the overaggrandizements, Dubya. That dog just won't hunt.
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And so the speech itself came to an end...I'm left thinking that it's been more than a generation since the words of a major American politician sounded lofty (no offense, Bubba, but you were pretty hollow-sounding with alarming regularity). But this took a newly-sized slice of cake, unparallelled in its audacity. Lofty, yes. Meaningful, hell no. Interesting, no. Imag-erific-ish, not even. Explain-ism-ish, still no. Worth my time, um...yes (I'm a slut for such American moments). Worth anyone's praise, absolutely not. In totality, empty political calories with no taste or panache. Easily digested, immediately passable, completely beneath the moment. Obviously, I've never supported Dubya and probably won't ever do so. I watched this as a sort of political Super Bowl - all hype, no game. I walked away from my TiVo unimpressed and discordant. Not one single element of that inaugural speech did anything to "unite, not divide." But what do I know. I voted for LaRouche.

Much will be written about this moment in our Nation's history - of that we can all be assured, like it or not. We live in a country facing some of the most daunting debates in our history, much less the coming century. Let anything that is written hereafter concerning this speech loop back around on one central principle - the only political poetry America has shown itself to care for is the easily-digestible kind. Limericks, really. Stupid, poetry-lite stuff, the kind appreciated by the already convinced. Still, I believe that America is ready for some REAL poetry again. I'm not a snob (or so I choose to believe), but I'm not afraid of a literary metaphor from time to time. As such, I believe that our best work is yet to come.

With that, I sign off. Last time I checked, protesters seemed to be minorly messing with the Inaugural Parade. That will pass, with little eventual effect, I'm sure. But even those displays appear decidedly civil, even when anarchic. Regardless, bless you all, Americans and otherwise.