Inaugural Thoughts

I actually heard a good chunk of President Obama's speech today.

He's a good speaker . . . he has just enough of the gospel preacher thing without going over the top (and that's not easy to do), he's thorough without being long-winded, inspiring without sounding hokey.

I think he said all the right things . . . and it's kind of hard not to, really, in January 2009. America's current problems make an Inaugural Address kind of a slam dunk for anyone with any intelligence and soul at all. But still, to mix My sports metaphors, fastballs right down the middle get fouled off all the time -- if Obama didn't knock his out of the park today, at the very least he hit a one-hop liner off the wall in a clutch situation.

I do wonder if any of this historic change in American politics portends any real change in America, though. I don't mean on any of the "big" issues . . . the economy will get fixed, partially, and fix itself, partially, We will figure out a way to gracefully exit Iraq and Afghanistan. Etc.

The change I wonder about and keep waiting for (foolishly, perhaps), is the fundamental shift wherein we reverse the places of sex and violence in our society. Corny, perhaps, to point this out for the 1,393,884th time, but a movie can show the most sickening acts of violence and cruelty and be rated PG-13, while a slang word for the procreative act or a bared breast is an automatic "R." The unsuccessful Culture War the Right waged for years didn't just acknowledge the ass-backwards places of sex and violence in this country, it embraced that perversion (and cynically relied on it). That they failed was less because the great mass of people rejected it but more because people didn't care all that much to embrace change of any kind.

Apathy -- America's single greatest weapon!

So I'm hopeful today, on many levels . . . but not particularly sanguine about the prospect that our twisted and tragic view of sex and violence will get straightened out any time soon.