Let the let downs begin

I was going to write something this morning at 6 as Obama was giving his inauguration speech. Now, twelve hours later anything I say will unfortunately just be parroting a lot of what has been said today.

The speech was highly anticipated, and completely under-delivered. There was no discernable thread running through it and holding it together, no central idea. There were only one or two memorable lines but because they were mixed in with so many cliches and long sentences replete with meaningless redundancies they were totally lost.

What happened to "Yes, we can." That was memorable. That had meaning. That was a hook that kept us in the speech. There were no such hooks today. I suspect most of the audience had glazed eyes after the first three minutes. They walked away with nothing. They were cheated.

I like Obama, but it will take more than his good oratory skills to save the world. First he needs to dump the 27 year old speech writer. He blew it today. Of course, Obama would have had a heavy hand in it so to some degree he blew it too.

Chief Justice Roberts should be considering his career options. Stumbling in the first sentence of the oath made for a bad start indeed. Even the smooth operator Obama took a while to recover.

I hate all the hype about Obama being black. He asked to be treated on his merit, not his skin colour. Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen.

His skin is black, but he's white through and through. He's not "African American". He was raised by his white mother and her white parents. A privileged upbringing. What does he know of the projects or discrimination? I don't think they had segregated drinking fountains at Harvard.

I think the winner fo the day was Rev. Joseph Lowery. He had the most memorable lines, and perhaps the greatest right to stand before that crowd and talk about change.