A great day

Yesterday couldn’t have been a bad day for me, even if my birthday had been completely forgotten. Watching the inauguration of Barack Obama meant the day would be a great one, no matter what—even though it was a bit early in the morning for me!

The only truly petty thing I did was chuckle when I saw Cheney in a wheelchair from a back strain caused by moving boxes. Well, I did flush a toilet when Rick Warren was introduced, too. When the Chief Justice said, “Congratulations, Mr. President” I shouted “Bush is gone!!!” but that wasn’t petty—it was a heartfelt cry of joy that the eight-year nightmare was finally over.

That oath flub has caused the latest round of twitching on the far right. Over at Faux News, host and former journalist Chris Wallace opined that because the oath was flubbed, Obama might not really be president, and that it would certainly end up in the courts. Is Wallace is a moron? The 20th Amendment makes clear that the new presidential and vice presidential terms begin at noon on January 20, with or without the oath. If Wallace didn’t know that, he shouldn’t be commenting on Constitutional and presidential matters. But, because everyone knows how crazy the wingnuts are, they re-did the oath and, because the wingnuts won’t let go easily, remind them that Calvin Coolidge and Chester A. Arthur also re-did their oaths.

At one wingnut site, commentors seized on this not only to repeat Wallace’s nonsense claim, but also to declare it was all President Obama’s fault. Yeah, right. While some were a little more sensible (“Come on, let this one go. It makes us look like idiots. Roberts flubbed it… Jumping on Obama for this makes us look like fools”), the majority that I read (before my stomach got too sick) were intensely negative, and most were merely attacks on Obama, lacking even a passing acquaintance with reason or fact—as you’d expect.

Here are my brickbats and bouquets for the day, starting with the latter: Obama’s speech was very good. Keeping it short wins extra bonus points on such a cold day. ABC (US) News (via Sky News Australia) provided good shots, and ABC also had far better coverage of the parade. Fox’s (!) video quality was superb. The quality of commentating on CNN was high.

Now, the bad: Fox commentators (of course) were often shrill, bad tempered and highly partisan (in fairness at other times they were fair minded). BBC commentary was boring and there was way too much of it.

But the broadcaster with the worst possible coverage was our own TVNZ’s TV One: It could not possibly have been any worse. They had people talking about what was going on, giving their opinions, while a screen in the background was displaying what was really going on: They ignored the screen. This is every bit as bad as the “coverage” they did on America’s election night. Seriously, if TVNZ won’t spring for some real coverage—including, in this case, a reporter in Washington, DC—then they should give it up and show re-runs of Dad’s Army. Or, they could do what Sky News Australia did and just re-broadcast someone who can actually manage coverage. My sources say that TV3 was much better, but there were some complaints about the comments of the hosts.

Well, there you have it: My experience and impression of Inauguration Day. There’s already much to comment on, but those are for other posts.