Outdoors at the inaugural celebration, Columbia University:
Never forget — we must be the change we wish to see on TV (zoom in on the screen):
This poster, on a lawyer’s office door in Harlem, is one of my favorites. It’s been up for months, and was still up after the inauguration today:
Obligatory snarky comment: did Rick Warren not show his speech to anyone who could recognize a fencepost error? We’re celebrating the peaceful transfer of power for the 43rd time, not the 44th. 44 presidents means 43 transfers.
Obligatory snarky response: Did nobody tell Barack Obama that despite being our 44th President, there have only been *43* different folks who “have now taken the presidential oath”? (Cleveland did it twice.) But no one will remember that. They’ll remember the Chief Justice who flubbed the oath itself. ๐
Well, power did transfer 44 times, but the first time was anything but peaceful, as Obama pointed out himself just moments later. ๐
Now wait for the conspiracy theorists to say that if the oath is flubbed, Obama isn’t really president.
@Mike
Nice catch!
And yeah, can’t believe that Roberts blew that one. I wonder how often that happens.
@Ayse
Indeed — but I think (haven’t found a transcript yet) that Warren did specify “peaceful” :-).
According to Talking Points Memo, the conspiracy theorists have already started, sort of…
I’m pretty sure Warren said that there had been 44 peaceful transfers of power, too. And my thought at the time was, “I don’t ever recall anybody implying that the Revolution was peaceful.”
Colour me totally unsurprised that Fox News is in the forefront of asserting that if the oath is flubbed, it’s not valid (for which there is no legal precedent). And even if it weren’t, it’s not as if Roberts can’t drive over to the White House tonight and re-administer it if the law required it.
I watched TV live , and the transcript appeared soon after Obama’s speech.
http://www.bnonews.com/elections/?id=348
Ayse, BUT IS IT STILL VALID IF IT’S NOT ADMINISTERED AT NOON, AS SPECIFIED IN THE CONSTITUTION??? WE’RE IN A POWER VACUUM HERE. SOMEBODY CALL AL HAIG!
Rock Sun, thanks for the link. And bnonews.com looks kind of interesting, too…
rocksun, the transcript that’s hard to find is not Obama’s speech, but that of the homophobe Warren.
Rock Sun,
You may not be aware of the controversy about Rick Warren (the preacher who delivered the invocation, before Obama spoke). Some background:
Rick Warren is the pastor of a very large church in California (see his Wikipedia Page, though note that it does not reflect much of this controversy right now, because it is locked from editing). That church was actually one of the first venues in which both Obama and McCain appeared during the campaign, for back-to-back interviews.
Rick Warren is also opposed to lesbian and gay marriage; if I recall correctly, he’s also opposed to civil unions for them, and has made some disparaging comments about homosexuals. Barack Obama generally supports lesbian and gay rights, such as non-discrimination laws and civil unions (though he does not support gay marriage — we all wonder if this is because he really doesn’t support it, or if he just thinks he couldn’t get elected if he came out in favor of it). Anyway, many people were disappointed when Obama selected Rick Warren to speak at the inauguration.
(Ayse et al: Rock Sun is in China and probably isn’t following the nuances of U.S. domestic politics as closely as… well, I was going to say as closely as the average American, but then I realized he’s probably following things much more closely than the average American. Let’s just say he’s probably not following it as closely as you are ๐ .)
-Karl
Hah! They did the oath again:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/01/roberts-and-obama-reunite-for-inaugural-do-over.php
Yesรฏยผล there are many nuances of U.S I don’t know, thank you for your explanation.
Obama is really a world wide star, and the media usually only focus on the main character .
US is really a religious nation, and most of Chinese had no religious belief(I don’t think the Confucian is a real religion, though most of us affected by the old culture more or less). We could not see the importance of pastor (Though I know some one, but I don’t think he could affect me much ), religion occupied little part of our daily lives.