However, I did watch the inaguration.

Here are my thoughts, in an order designed for maximum rhetorical impact (not really):

* DKL’s response was painfully predictable.

* I wonder if this is the first time that so many Mormons have switched their primary allegiance from the Gospel to a new messiah. (Oh, wait. There was Ronald Reagan. Never mind. This is barely a blip then).

* John Williams’ is still riding the coattails of his Star Wars success. Seriously - he's not that good of a composer. Yeah, yeah, Wagnerian motiffs, etc. etc. It's the same old same old.

* Itzhak Perlman was born in Tel Aviv, Yo Yo Ma was born in Paris. Gabriela Montero was born in Venezuela. I have no idea if this means anything at all. I was born on the internet, so what does that make me?

* Dick Cheney needs a cat to stroke and metallic hands. It would have also helped if he had had his back turned to the audience so no one could see his face.

* Aretha Franklin’s outfit was freshly killed that morning, I heard.

* Obama’s missteps in the presidential oath will mean whole loads of right wing nutters will argue that he isn't really president. Those who are a little smarter will notice that the oath was administered again the next day, and instead argue that everything Obama did on his first day in office doesn't count.

* Obama’s inaugural address was pretty much the same as the last two. (Yeah, yeah - I linked to that in the last post. So what?)

* Elizabeth Alexander’s reading was, I believe, post-post-post-modern performance art. There's really no other explanation.

* I got distracted before Joseph Lowery’s Benediction, so I missed it. The music afterward was typically overblown, but that's a bipartisan fault.

In the end though, I'm sure that critics of this administration will be consumed by the unprecedented, hateful hysteria that has surrounded our last president (the main difference is that Obama will enjoy a solid, worshipful base that Bush never had).