News for January 20
January 20, 2009 by Barbara
Filed under News and Analysis
Inauguration Day
Barack Obama will be sworn in as president of the United States at noon EST today. While we await this historic moment, here’s a collection of links to some thoughtful, hopeful, cautious — and fun – blog posts about the inauguration. The posts make connections with the day to Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy, while others speculate on what form the Obama administration might take. Watch for reactions and commentaries to the inauguration and Obama’s first few hours tomorrow.
Where Has America Been? | My Left Wing
When I think of Obama and the moment he will place his hand on the Bible to become our first African American President, I can’t help but think of buses. It was a woman on a bus who symbolized the beginning of the path that pointed to this moment. She precipitated a bus boycott that brought forth a man whose holiday we celebrate today to the greatness that lay within him waiting to be awakened. It was buses that carried a delegation of Mississippi Freedom Democrats to Atlantic City in 1964 to remind America of what it stood for even as some sitting uncomfortably in their seats were not sure they would make it home alive. It was from a bus that one of them, Fannie Lou Hamer, was pulled, placed in jail and beaten to near death. It was buses that carried the idealists of Freedom Summer and those participants of the march that ended in Lincoln’s granite shadow where the man whose crusade had started with that bus boycott inspired this nation to its very soul. Now again people are taking to the buses, only this time not in anger or protest but in celebration.
Pre-Inaugural Reflections | Ezra Klein
The past two months have marked his slow transition from idea into president. What Obama meant is increasingly submerged beneath what Obama does. The fact that we elected a black man says little about how we spend the TARP dollars, or mediate the conflict in Gaza, or stimulate the economy. Tomorrow, our politics will be at its highest point in memory. We will have elected an African-American. We will be inaugurating a president with higher approval ratings than any other incoming executive since the advent of polling. But then politics will quiet, for a little while at least, and governance will take over. Obama will stop representing things and start doing things.
What We Talk about When We Talk about Obama | The American Prospect
A month ago, I wrote that Obama was likely to pursue policies as progressive as the moment will allow — but that he will likely always present them as pragmatic and post-partisan. As I write this, Obama has yet to deliver his inaugural address. But let me go out on a limb and say that it will seek to foster unity among all Americans, paying homage to progressive values but in a way that seeks to convince conservatives that they too can be a part of the enterprise he now begins. I can also predict that for all its beckoning across the aisle, Obama’s speech will make progressives wipe a tear of joy and inspiration from their eyes, as one of their own at last becomes the most powerful man on earth. It is his desire to do both that seems like it will define his presidency. But it’s only the first day.
Facebook, Online Video Make Obama Inauguration Interactive | CSMonitor.com
While the White House staff is busy Tuesday morning swapping out first families (in six hours flat!) the rest of the world will be watching the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. The January tradition has long been covered by TV, radio, and newspapers, but this year, we have a host of new options – some with decidedly techie twists.
Face to Faith | altMuslim
The inauguration is a ritual, akin to Muslims touching the walls of the Ka’bah in Mecca. It renders tangible the ethereal. It is a reminder that the government is like an idol, a fact that was well known to those who introduced the modern nation-state – the French even raised a new goddess after the revolution – but which goes entirely forgotten by us. The comparison is not all exalted, however. Quite like the hajj – where wealthy western and Gulf-based Muslims discover their piety in five-star hotels while everyone else stays in a tent city on the desert plain of Mina – the inauguration also offers an insight into inequality.
Inauguration Day: Re-Imagining Ourselves | Religion Dispatches
We do extreme damage if we assume the election of Barack Obama marks the end of struggle. No, it places our country on the edge of a promise. It is an opportunity uncovered, not an opportunity fulfilled. This statement is not meant to take away from the historic nature of the achievement we have made for ourselves, and the world. Rather, it is meant to suggest the need for a measured realism—recognition that this does not signal the death knell of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia and the other modalities of injustice that have infected our nation.
Desnubbed: Robinson Prayer to Air | Marc Ambinder @The Atlantic
Barack Obama’s inaugural committee is taking for the blame for a scheduling miscue that left gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson’s prayer out of HBO’s live broadcast of yesterday’s inaugural megaconcert. Robinson, the first openly gay Anglican church bishop, called Obama’s selection of conservative Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation a “slap in the face.” So observers noticed immediately when Robinson’s prayer wasn’t broadcast by HBO. Conspiracy theories abound.
Inauguration Fun …
Why Doesn’t Every President Use the Lincoln Bible? | Slate
The Inaugural Address Quiz | ProPublica
Obama Inaugural Betting | Disnifo.com
Barbara Schwartz is the editorial director at the Xenia Institute. She lives in Oklahoma City, Okla., and currently is pursuing a Master of Divinity degree at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa.
