January 21, 2009

Inauguration Day

Dancing in the street by deranged crone and two astonishingly beautiful hellhounds reported in a small town in Hampshire.  Neighbours might not have minded the dancing so much, but the maniacal laughter punctuated by shouts of I’m an American again were disconcerting.  With that accent, she’s always been an American.

            But it’s how it feels, you know?  I’ve been clinging increasingly grimly to my belief that being an American is a good thing:  Octavia Butler was an American, Beverly Sills was an American, John James Audubon, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Anne Bradstreet, Elizabeth Blackwell, Edgar Allan Poe, Edith Wharton, Elizabeth Bishop, the Wright brothers, Charles Ives, Scott Joplin, Andrew Carnegie*, Sarah Caldwell, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lawrence Tippet, Oliver Butterworth, Mark Twain, L Frank Baum, Margaret Chase Smith, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lucy Johnston Sypher, Stephen Jay Gould, Edward O Wilson, John Muir, Artur Rubenstein*, Vladimir Horowitz*, Tatanka Yotanka, Frances Perkins, ee cummings, Theodore Roethke** . . . there are lots of good reasons to be glad to be counted as an American among Americans.***  But it’s been kind of hard to remember the last eight years.

            And what about that inaugural speech then?†  I’d just emailed to Hannah that he was still a politician, and every time I started feeling stirrings of hope and faith about the new guy he’d do something political and I’d lose it again, and that while Peter and I were going to listen to the inaugural speech I was probably making a mistake because he’d make some grand rhetorical gesture that would make me hate him for at least six months.††  But . . . golly.  I like the 27-year-old speechwriter with the Starbucks habit–and can’t Obama just put it the heck over then?  Golly.  And I realise it’s all considered and calculated but as someone who thinks charisma should be outlawed and anyone caught wielding it should be jailed for a minimum of two years with thousands of hours of community service, I was thrilled that he went for earnest, which I could go with.†††

            But, you reporter and reviewer people, can we please not push the Abe Lincoln thing too far?  And he’s nothing like John Kennedy, except they were both Democrats under 50 when they took office.  Remember how it ended, with Lincoln and Kennedy?  I kept looking at the almost-clear, not-horribly-conspicuous-except-you-keep-looking-at-it barrier and thinking, it’s not HIGH enough!  May the SUV tank be a good luck charm, even when he’s–they’re–not in it.  Last night it occurred to me, after I’d already posted, that maybe nobody should send the Emerson White PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTER books to Malia and Sasha, since in the second one the president is shot and wounded and in the third one Meg is kidnapped by terrorists.  But . . . is it better to have your monsters under the bed and invisible except for the drooling, or do you want them out in a clear space with a bright hot light on them where you can keep an eye on them?  And how are they explaining to a ten year old and a seven year old‡ that they and their mum and especially their dad are in permanent danger of their lives every minute of every day for the next four years?  Dear gods, fates and fairies:  preserve our First Family, please.  I don’t want anybody dead‡‡ but I really want to see our new president take a big bite out of what he’s promised in his inaugural speech.‡‡‡  If he means it–and I hope he means it–the country and the world need him.

            I’m an American.  And yes, I’m proud of the fact that Americans in aggregate have just conspicuously demonstrated that Bush was not our ideal leader.  That we don’t want more of the same.  That how we look and behave not only at home but in the world matters to us.  And . . . that America can produce a chap like Obama.  Can you imagine him as . . . British prime minister?  And okay, he’s officially African-American§ but he still looks like a white guy with a tan to me.§§

            So, reality, and all those tough choices and unpopular decisions Obama was talking about, begin tomorrow, or maybe next week:  tonight I am going to go to bed with the luxury of a lighter heart, and a belief–at least till next week–that we still can save the planet.  And be friends.

            PS:  I can’t resist giving you this link too: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/19/obama-mania-london    Imagine having people’s faces light up when they hear your (American) accent.  I may have to schlep up to London just to check it out. 

* * *

 * Yes, I know they weren’t native born.  They still count. 

** I could go on.  I could go on and on and on.  Despite roots going down to buried-Atlantis level in the country I live in, in some ways I’ve grown to appreciate America and Americans more by living somewhere else.  And yes, when I’ve got it particularly badly wrong with British mores I think of, oh, Lily Tomlin or General Patton and then I feel much better.  The really weird thing is that while of course almost all my old friends are American, the close friends I’ve made in the last twenty years are mostly American too.  This is, of course, convenient, when you need to talk to someone at 3 am.  

*** I think all these people are dead.  I went for dead on the (ahem) grounds that the 1,000,000,000,000 I left out are less embarrassing when they’re not current affairs. 

† http://www.guardian.co.uk/  This is the way they’re playing it over here.  I’ll try and remember to update this link once it’s not simply the opening page which it is at the moment.  I am a little cranky that the first sub-headline is Ted Kennedy’s collapse.  Yes, and there was a sighting of a small stegosaurus in Montana the day before yesterday.  Page twelve. 

†† She wrote back, go find someone else’s parade to pee on, she’s going to enjoy this one. 

††† And I hope the seafood stew was satisfactory.  I wonder if poor Barack was in any shape to notice what he was eating? 

‡ I think:  or so–? 

‡‡ No, not even Bin Laden:  but I sure want him under lock and key, guarded by deaf missile-proof robots, and no access to wireless.

‡‡‡  I was seriously creeped out by the opening chaplain, but wasn’t the civil rights bloke at the end darling?  That’s the way to do it, if you can:  say the right things but say them warm and funny.  I wish I thought this would work in Afghanistan. 

§ British commentators are just as vast and flaming assh–twerps as American.  One of our BBC 1 nincompoops started raving about our first African American president fulfilling the founding fathers’ dream.  The founding bloody fathers did not give a pig’s fart for ANYONE who wasn’t WHITE and MALE.  And while I’m now perfectly willing to go with our first heavily tanned half-Caucasian president, I would still like to live to see our first woman president.  She could be Hindu or first-generation from Japanese parents perhaps. 

§§ Does anyone else think that Michelle looks a little like Sigourney Weaver?^  And I liked Michelle’s inaugural dress.  Sue me.  I’ll let you know what I think of her ball gown. 

^ Note I’m a big Weaver fan.

January 21, 2009 | Filed Under real world, wow 

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