So why shouldn’t I resign my hat into the ring with all the other commentators? I watched it, and over all, it underwhelmed me. So here’s my take on the whole Inauguration Day Madness.
First of all, what went wrong with the music? Aretha’s canned subsidy track arrangement simply reeked of schmaltz, and when combined with her ridiculous hat, took us all back to the Reagan era inaugurations (I wasn’t in the land of the living sensitive then, so I’m guessing at the amount of schmaltz and surplus bows). And while Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, and John Williams collectively have more talent that the rest of the world put together, that behaviour fell flat. By the way, do we not have any home-grown classical musical talent? No corn-fed Midwest violin virtuosos? And you merely cannot do “Simple Gifts” without a trumpet. We all recognize, even if we don’t know the name, Copland’s superb arrangement of this song. It needs a trumpet. I don’t even particularly like trumpets, but to do that piece with no trumpet fanfare is a sacrilege!
Obama’s speech, as I expected, had neither nervous punch nor any kind of even vaguely specific plans. While most of it just went in one ear and out the other, one comment made my jaw drop. He said, “We will not beg for our way of life.” What!!! We are apologizing for our way of life, we have been apologizing, and we will probably continue to apologize for many years. The accepted economic crisis, the apocalyptic weather, and even the terrorist attacks are invitations to apologize for a lifestyle that has spent the last several decades from start to finish out of control. If we want the change that Obama promised, then each and every individual person also needs to change, and change fundamentally, our soul styles, or else we will have a much bigger apology to make.
The ceremony reached its low point with the “poem,” if I can even call it that. The ditty itself had no rises and falls, no tension, no drama, and of course no rhythm or rhyme,...

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