Countdown
So, is anyone else having weird little excited fluttery feelings about the inauguration next Tuesday? I don’t mean the thoughtful, informed, considered hope for a new president and a new direction*, or even the air-punching yessssss of a lot of desperate Democrats, but an almost looking-forward-to-the-party feeling**. A feeling that maybe the world can change, and the president of the United States of America–who is at least arguably still the single most powerful person in the world today, despite eight years of Bush–can make a difference. That even a politician can make a difference.
And the official countdown began today: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2009/jan/15/obama-white-house-obama-inauguration
Although while I’m sitting here wondering whether Obama’s ideas are good enough and he is tough enough*** to make real change happen, anyone wanting a break from the grim, terrifying aspects of the new regime† and going to look for silly is spoilt for choice.†† I am interested in the varying estimates of the numbers of portaloos that are going to be distributed around the capital for inauguration day: TIME magazine–which of course has a weekly’s deadlines–says 5000. The Daily Mail over here says ‘more than 5000′. The Guardian’s inauguration blog today says 7000.†††
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/oliverburkemanblog/2009/jan/17/obama-inauguration-barackobama
The NYTimes appears to be too high-minded to get into a discussion of toilet facilities at all, or anyway I couldn’t get its ‘search’ to bring anything up‡, and instead it opines that people are going to stay home in their millions http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/us/politics/17inaug.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=inauguration&st=cse
. . . because they’re all going to have been scared off by the prospect of a crush that requires 7000 portaloos.
Meanwhile the debate about the First Dog continues:
http://www.dailynewstribune.com/lifestyle/x1026069412/The-first-family-dog-debate-goes-on
Someone tell the frelling Kennel Club to lighten up. If the Obamas are going to stick with the adoptacritter plan, any dog out of a shelter is an unknown quantity, I don’t care what its genes are. Or aren’t. I of course think they should get Malia to a homeopath. They get her allergies sorted out, there’s a whole world of possible dogs out there. Hellhounds, even.
But my award for most ridiculous item‡‡ is this video:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/video/2009/jan/16/obama-inauguration-lunch-food-menu
Not a one of these people has a clue about what tone they should be taking and as a result they all look as if they’ve been recently clipped over the ear and are still a little dazed. And who is doing that slow, deliberate scallop-chopping? Certainly no professional chef.‡‡‡ I also want to know how many of the people who will be sitting around that table have either a dairy or a seafood allergy.§ And what they’ll have to eat.
* * *
* Please the gods, a direction so new it’ll need a whole new word. North, south, east, west, and Obama.
** Okay, I hate parties. A looking-forward-to-the-visit-to-the-rose-nursery feeling.
*** You will have noticed that the sharks are already circling around his multi-zillion-dollar economic rescue plan. I have no idea if it’s a good plan or not: all those zeroes kick me into tax-payer^ hand-wringing mode and my brain stops working.
^ You better believe it. I pay taxes twice.
† Have you seen a photo of the new chief exec’s car? That’s one SUV–probably the one SUV–I’m not going to argue about having the right to exist. But . . . that’s the point. It looks like a tank with unusually high ground clearance. It looks like a transformer that turns into the Incredible Hulk, the first division of the United States Army, and forty-seven Secret Service men. It looks like it can repel regiments of rabid rhinoceroses. And the occasional assassin. I hope it can. And I hope it never has to.
†† Point one, urgent: Find something for Michelle to do. I couldn’t shrieking believe it when I opened this week’s TIME and glanced down the ‘inauguration preview’ and found one of the headings: Fashion. Michelle may turn out to be the most stylish First Lady since Jackie. Dear heavens^, are we going to have chocolate chip cookie recipes next?
^ From which John Milton is no doubt laughing I-told-you-so-ishly
††† . . . Sigh. I admit that while what one wants out of a blog is the individual, subjective view, I was hoping that the Guardian’s inauguration blog would be a trifle more . . . um . . . substantive?
‡ ‘Your search did not match any documents . . . all results since 1851′ it says sniffily. So, what was the portaloo situation like for Franklin Pierce’s^ inauguration?
^ The one president my alma mater, Bowdoin, has managed to graduate. Oops. Well, better him than . . . ahem.
‡‡ But you do want to remember I spend more time hurtling hellhounds and reading novels in the bath than I do chasing inaugural links.
‡‡‡ I want to make a joke here about checking his credentials, but I think about that car, and it’s not funny.
§ Rats. There goes my invitation to lunch when Malia decides BEAUTY is the best book she ever read.
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