Words of Inauguration Day

“The world has changed, and we must change with it,” President Barack Obama said in his inaugural address. It was one in a number of statements in the passive voice that characterized first speech as President. He used this mode not only when illustrating our present difficulties (“homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered”), but also when assuring Americans about the challenges we face:

“Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: they will be met.”

No sooner had the words passed his lips than he quickly shifted gears. This generation of Americans would have to meet these challenges, and to inspire his people, Obama praised “the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things,” and brought as a reference the accomplishments of emblematic Americans throughout history: immigrants, farmers, slaves, sweatshop workers, pioneers, and soldiers who fought in wars of all eras.

As the speech went on, the President’s sentences became increasingly activated, and not with the hopeful “yes we can” of his campaign, but with an expression of greater confidence: “We will.” He didn’t shy away from poetry either, even when talking about subjects as down to earth as alternative energy sources: “[W]e will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.”

In his closing paragraphs, he succinctly summed up, better than any of the moronic talking (white)heads who have been proclaiming the start of a new “post-racial” era, the meaning of this moment:

“Because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger, and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass, that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve, that as the world grows smaller our common humanity shall reveal itself, and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”

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Can we all agree that Rick Warren was lucky to have been assigned the invocation? The uncomfortable task of speaking immediately after our Poet-in-Chief fell to Elizabeth Alexander, and her poem couldn’t help but fall short of Obama’s oratory. Its references to American workers fell flat, and because she spoke each syllable distinctly – as in “Any thing can be made / any sen-tence be-gun” – her reference to Obama’s comment about “the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables” felt stilted. (Almost as if it were being repeated by Senator John ‘I don’t quite know how many houses I have, but I can relate to your economic difficulties’ McCain.) If Alexander’s poem were given a public rereading, she would do well to ask someone else to do it.

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Every good event needs a clear coda to let the audience know that it is over, and Rev. Dr. Joseph E. Lowery provided just that with his moving benediction. He began, his face half obscured by the podium’s microphones, by quoting a verse from James Weldon Johnson’s poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” The rhymes that inspired those who struggled for civil rights felt completely appropriate, as did the other diverse sources upon which Reverend Lowery drew. After lifting lines from traditional songs (“Because we know you got the whole world in your hand”), adapting from scripture (“tanks will be beaten into tractors”), and invoking Obama channeling the Constitution, (“yes we can work together to achieve a more perfect union”), Reverend Lowery concluded with a gently humorous reiteration of the message of inclusion:

And in the joy of a new beginning,
We ask you to help us work for that day,
When black will not be asked to get back,
When brown can stick around,
When yella will be mella,
When the red man can get ahead, man,
And when white will embrace what is right.
Let all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen, say amen, and amen.

Unlike Rick Warren, who seemed to ask for forgiveness for our personal and national failings, Reverend Lowery asked god to “deliver us” and to “help us” to do right. With the wisdom of age, he imbued in age-old proverbs renewed wisdom.

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It was clear that Reverend Lowery’s words hit home. Thank you, CNN, for showing us our new President’s head nodding in agreement, for showing us our last good President’s head bowed in prayer, and for not showing us (except when absolutely necessary) whatever it was the Departing Dude was doing.