On the Inauguration 2009...

I'm tired of the media of all those hype around the Inauguration Day 2009 for the incoming president Obama. I have accepted that, Obama has won the presidential race and he's going to be sworn in, then begins to fix the mess that George W Bush has left behind. Everyone's been talking about how historical this is, yada, yada. There's even much talk about the dress that Michelle Obama wears, yada, yada, yada. Unfortunately, I simply don't feel it. I don't feel the hype, I don't feel the excitement, I don't feel how great Obama is.

I do hope I'm wrong though, that even though I'm not jumping and leaping for Obama, he'll do a fine job to be the commander-in-chief. But my guess is, even if you put MLK in that job with hyped-up hopes, you're bound to be disappointed. With so much backpeddling that Obama already has gone through, I'm simply surprised that no one is holding him up for much scrutiny, if at all. The media and most public seem to yawn to have such low expectation of this guy ("give him a break, he didn't create this mess"; "he's the first black president!"; "he's making history already, what more do you expect?!"), that Obama looks set to walk on water or separate the Red Sea within the first year of his term.

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We don't own or watch TV, which is a very handy thing to ignore all the hypes and white noise. Last night, I made a gesture to my kids. In order not to deprive the kids of any "historic moments", I offered to let them watch some video streams of Obama's inaugural speech from the day earlier. I'm not interested in rhetorics (which is Obama's forte), although bad speeches like those from Bush made me cringe. But I was surprised when my kids both exclaimed, "we watched it already!" I asked "where/when?" and they told me the school let the kids watch it on the TV (or recorded tape) in the library. My son, who's 8, had no further comments. My daughter, who's 6, immediately added, "It's boring!" I was only too happy not to have to sit though it.