Inaugural Day: Pomp and Ceremony, or Elder Abuse?

Senator Kennedy , 76 years old and seriously ill with a brain tumor, had a seizure brought on by fatigue. Senator Byrd, 91 years old and with one foot in the grave already, was carried out of the inaugural luncheon unconscious. Vice President Cheney, 67 years old with a pacemaker and multiple heart attacks, had to attend in a wheelchair.

In keeping with tradition, they, along with many other office holders, Supreme Court Justices, and politicians equally old and infirm, attended Inaugural Day events from the crack of dawn until late at night and sat around outdoors for hours on end in 17-degree weather. Is there something wrong with that picture?

The Inaugural Poem Wasn't All That Bad

I kind of liked the Elizabeth Alexander (see her website) poem, even though I'm disposed to dislike modern poetry. She won't make me throw out my T.S. Eliot, but I have to say that Alexander is kinda, sorta, not so bad for a modern poet.

Praise Song for the Day consists of 14 unrhymed three-line stanzas and a one-line coda: "praise song for walking forward in that light." It's mostly imagery, with only a little bit of vulgar politics. Best of all, it was nice and short, taking less than four minutes to read. You can watch her read it here, and can find the text here.

It could have been much, much, worse. Alexander's previous poems include this sort of thing:

Haircut - by Elizabeth Alexander

I get off the IRT in front of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture after riding an early Amtrak from Philly to get a hair cut at what used to be the Harlem "Y" barbershop. It gets me in at ten to ten. Waiting, I eat fish cakes at the Pam Pam and listen to the ladies call out orders: bacon-biscuit twice, scrambled scrambled fried, over easy, grits, country sausage on the side. Hugh is late. He shampoos me, says "I can't remember, Girlfriend, are you tender-headed?" From the chair I notice the mural behind me in the mirror. I know those overlapped sepia shadows, a Renaissance rainforest, Aaron Douglas! Hugh tells me he didn't use primer and the chlorine eats the colors every day. He clips and combs and I tell him how my favorite Douglas is called "Building More Stately Mansions," and he tells me how fly I'd look in a Salt 'n' Pepa 'do, how he trained in Japan.

Clip clip, clip clip. I imagine a whoosh each time my hair lands on the floor and the noises of small brown mammals. I remember, my father! He used to get his hair cut here, learned to swim in the caustic water, played pool and basketball. He cuts his own hair now. My grandfather worked seventy-five years in Harlem building more stately mansions. I was born two blocks away and then we moved.

None of that seems to relate to today. This is not my turf, despite the other grandfather and great-aunt who sewed hearts back into black chests after Saturday night stabbings on this exact corner, the great-uncle who made a mosaic down the street, both grandmothers. What am I always listening for in Harlem? A voice that says, "This is your place, too," as faintly as the shadows in the mural? The accents are unfamiliar; all my New York kin are dead. I never knew Fats Waller but what do I do with knowing he used to play with a ham and a bottle of gin atop his piano; never went to Olivia's House of Beauty but I know Olivia, who lives in St. Thomas, now, and who exactly am I, anyway, finding myself in these ghostly, Douglas shadows while real ghosts walk around me, talk about my stuff in the subway, yell at me not to butt the line, beg me, beg me, for my money?

What is black culture? I read the writing on the wall on the side of the "Y" as I always have: "Harlem Plays the Best Ball in the World." I look in the mirror and see my face in the mural with a new haircut. I am a New York girl; I am a New York woman; I am a flygirl with a new hair cut in New York City in a mural that is dying every day.

Did I just say she's not so bad? Uh ... let me think that over.

Barack Obama: Gun Salesman of the Year

I'd seen news reports of a firearms buying frenzy in advance of the Obama administration, but not until today did I see Obama's image used to advertise guns and gun accessories. I was browsing on-line stores to price night sights for my Glock - not out of any fear of new gun controls, but just because I want night sights - and saw the banner above for the "Coronation Sale."

This is one kind of economic stimulus that I don't expect to see Obama take credit for.

CNN Reports: Pilgrimage to the Holy City of Washington

I'd heard it referred to as the Immaculate Inauguration of Barack Obama,
but that was meant in jest. Now a CNN report has made a serious comparison of Obama's inauguration to the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Oh, they made a half-hearted attempt to frame it as a story about crowd control at large events, but clearly CNN likes the idea of the inaugural as religious ceremony.

I like the comparison, too, but I wonder why we don't go the whole nine yards? At Mecca, the pilgrims do more than just passively attend an event. They walk counter-clockwise seven times about the Kaaba, run back and forth between the hills of Al-Safa and Al-Marwah, drink from the Zamam well, go to the plains of Mount Arafat to stand in vigil, and throw stones at three pillars in the city of Mina in a ritual stoning of the devil.

Here's my idea for making Obama's inauguration day a more fully satisfying experience for his devout followers. First, instead of having Obama lead an inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in front of stationary attendees, let's have the attendees walk around the Washington Mall nines times (it will help them keep warm). Then let's have them run back and fourth between the Washington and Lincoln Memorials, and afterwards stand silently before the Capitol Building. Next, they can drink from the Reflecting Pool (if they dare; have you seen the water in there?). And for the big finale, they can all walk past three pillars symbolizing Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld and throw stones at their political devils.

People would love it, and it would become an annual event.

Passport Peeper to be Penalized

According to U.S. District Court documents posted at The Smoking Gun (read them here), a former State Department employee who improperly satisfied his idle curiosity about the Passport Records of the Rich and Famous has signed a plea agreement admitting to unauthorized computer access.

A former Department of State employee illegally accessed confidential computer files to examine the passport records of 150 "celebrities, actors, musicians, comedians, models, politicians, athletes, members of the media" and others, according to federal court records ... [Dwayne] Cross accessed the passport files over a five-and-a-half year period ending in August 2007, according to one court filing, which noted that he viewed the confidential information out of "idle curiosity" and did not "download, copy, print, forward, share, market, sell, or otherwise disseminate" the records.

I wonder how often unauthorized peeping happens at the Internal Revenue Service? Their records must be a whole lot more interesting than anything you could find n a passport file.

Improving America's Image Abroad: GAO Gives It a 5 Out of 13

The General Accountability Office (GAO) has rank-ordered the nation's most urgent issues that require action during the first year of the incoming Obama administration, and the result is pretty good news for advocates of a more robust Public Diplomacy. "Improving America's Image Abroad" made it to position #5 on GAO's list, right behind Defense Spending and just ahead of the 2010 Census.

Here is today's Washington Post story on the GAO's press release. The press release itself and GAO's summary of the issue are here and here.

This quote from the GAO summary is the heart of the matter:

Gaps in research data, foreign language capability, staffing, and resources hinder the United States’ ability to best target and communicate with key foreign audiences.

In other words, more money and personnel are needed. As the WaPo story points out, the budget for public diplomacy efforts, which was $358 million for 2008, is a mere pittance to a government that allows its Defense Department to contract out over $100 million for strategic communications services next year in Iraq alone.

Those Were the Times That Tried Men's Souls, 233 Years Ago

(Read it here)











Published anonymously (due to its treasonous content) on January 10th, 1776, Thomas Paine's 43-page pamphlet, Common Sense, became one of the foundational documents of the early American Republic, and of the modern American mind as well.

Paine said in a later treatise that "the moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy." And instruct he did, in a long series of works that influenced both the American and French Revolutions. But he never did it better than with his first pamphlet. You may judge how much influence Common Sense had on contemporary events by the fact that it sold 500,000 copies during 1776 alone, when there were only 2.5 million people living in all 13 colonies.

Has any other piece of propaganda [and I use that word non-pejoratively, since I think it's more forthright than the rather euphemistic P-word synonyms that replaced it, e.g., psychological operations, political warfare, perception management, or even public diplomacy] since 1776 been remotely as successful?