Dinhternet

Today, I tuned in to Pres­i­dent Obama’s coro­na­tion inau­gu­ra­tion. (From Nate Beeler polit­i­cal car­toons.) And speak­ing of tight­ened secu­rity, not every ticket-holder got to see the cer­e­mony today.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not try­ing to soil the day or any­thing. It was a beau­ti­ful day, and despite the fum­ble on the oath of office -

which is to me the most impor­tant part of the day, his inau­gural address was mov­ing, and I, like many oth­ers, have high hopes that he can take our coun­try for­ward in the right direc­tion. (And a lit­tle word­ing prob­lem isn’t even close to what has gone wrong in the past.)

But are our hopes and expec­ta­tions too high? Obama is a man, not a super­hero (from Sin­fest), a saint, or a mes­siah. He received a man­date of the peo­ple to become Pres­i­dent, not a man­date of heaven to be King. The Found­ing Fathers wanted us to have a sim­ple cer­e­mony to remind us of that fact, but with every new pres­i­dent, it gets cra­zier and cra­zier.

And of course, there’s the grow­ing cov­er­age. Mov­ing way beyond the old-school tele­vi­sion and radio, we have online stream­ing footage, a crowd-sourced pho­to­synth, and even satel­lite cov­er­age by Google. (Which was claimed by CNN.)

I guess this is all a round­about way of say­ing, we all want the coun­try to move for­ward, but don’t expect Pres­i­dent Obama’s 100th day in office to end with the Rap­ture. (I don’t agree with Lim­baugh, I just think pun­dits will always have a place.)

An arti­cle I read recently reminded me of an old post of mine about a Calvin and Hobbes comic where Bill Wat­ter­son com­pares reli­gion and television.

Instead of ref­er­enc­ing Karl Marx, though, this arti­cle points out that both reli­gion and fic­tion serve a pur­pose of strength­en­ing in-groups and out-groups by way of rein­forc­ing shared val­ues. We like to share sto­ries that sup­port the “social truths” we value, and like for oth­ers around us to also value those sto­ries. It makes me won­der, though — are social truths uni­ver­sal? I’ve said before that I can appre­ci­ate fic­tional heroes, but would not sup­port their actions out­side of their fic­tional world.

Just some­thing to con­sider as I enjoy the new sea­sons of 24 and Hus­tle. Oh, and this new web­site makes it eas­ier than ever for me to watch TV because I can make a joint RSS feed of all the TV shows I want, and uTor­rent will auto­mat­i­cally start the down­loads for me as soon as new episodes are avail­able. It even checks for dupli­cate episodes for me.

How­ever, I’ll soon be putting those shows on hold for a week. A GoodReads friend of mine invited me to not watch TV for the week of Feb­ru­ary 2nd through the 8th. I haven’t watched live TV for a while now, since down­loaded episodes are so much more con­ve­nient, but I won’t be watch­ing through my com­puter either for the week, just to see how things go. Not sure what I’ll be doing instead, so if you aren’t watch­ing TV either and want to hang out, I’ll most def­i­nitely be down.

(That’s one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes strips.)

Just saw Obama’s speech, as well as clips of Clinton’s and McCain’s speeches. I have to say, I’m a believer. Nick and I briefly dis­cussed going, but I’m glad I decided not to; by the time we got there, we wouldn’t have got­ten in any­way. I heard the line was so long it wrapped around the sta­dium twice and then went down the street, and that there were over ten thou­sand peo­ple stand­ing around out­side the Xcel Energy Cen­ter in St. Paul because they couldn’t get in, and despite the police telling them to go home, they wanted to watch Obama’s speech on the Jum­botron outside.

A cou­ple of notes… I find it funny that his chant is the slo­gan of a kids’ TV show. Should we start call­ing him “Barack the Builder?” As for the fact that McCain’s cam­paign sub­ti­tle is now “A Leader We Can Believe In;” for all intents and pur­poses, it’s a one word dif­fer­ence from his oppo­nent. Tele­vi­sion really is melt­ing our brains; even the sound bites are blur­ring into nothing.

Any­way, I’ll leave you with this video:

Oh, and about Clinton’s extremely taste­less com­ment… I won­der if Obama has seen the first sea­son of 24.