...Tuesday, January 20, 2009...
So it goes without saying that today is a day to remember in American history. President elect, Barack Obama, officially makes his move into the White House as this lovely broken nation.
As I sat on my couch to watch my very first Inauguration Day special, a couple of things went through my mind as America's first black president got out of his pimped out Obamabile to parade around the streets of DC and wave at the 2 million plus people lucky enough to have witnessed this event first hand: First of which was, "Are you serious?! Get back in your bullet proof car! We can't have anything happen to you on your first day up!" This first thought then birthed the second one that then came to mind: fear, which, come to think of it, is more of a feeling than an actual thought. But, it was kinda weird to me because I've never cared enough to fear for the life of our president and given how obviously historical this president is, I'm sure that a hit put on Obama isn't far from the minds of some crazy Republicans and American Nazis (I just so happened to watch a documentary on American Nazis on youtube which is probably why I thought of them first).
The event went on and, thoughtfully, DirectTV has this "Inaugural Day Mix" station which is an interactive station that displayed the video of all the channels covering the inauguration. All you had to do was highlight the video box of your choice and the corresponding audio would play. Twas very helpful and saved a lot of time channel surfing.
So despite spending most of my time switching between CBS and CNN's coverage, I decided to check out Fox News' pabulum..I mean coverage. As soon as I highlighted the Fox display, moments after my moment of fear for Obama, the audio starts playing in time for me to catch a Fox reporter say how Obama is the first Senator since JFK to be elected president....beautiful. Could you be any more smug and eerie with your statement, Mr. Fox News reporter? Maybe it was just me but I sensed some foreshadowing in his voice.
Then I sat there in awe at how different the coverage was on Fox News. I've heard nothing but great things about Obama's speech and up until switching to Fox's hogwash. The other channels spoke about how inspiring it was and how it contained a number of great quotables, namely the part with the clenched fist/open hand metaphor. But on Fox, they were just kicking the speech swiftly in the esophagus with a steel toe boot. "He was too hard and unfair towards George Bush" to which the guy who wrote speeches for George Bush replied, "It's not that he was too hard on George Bush, it just wasn't a good speech." Seriously? The dude who worked for George Bush had the audacity to say that it was a terrible speech. But, oh well.
Another thing popped into mind, which is probably one of the most important, I think, for our generation, and for generations to come, to understand: we as minorities could no longer blame "the man" for any of our short comings. Having a minority, one with an immigrant father no less, hold the highest position of office, the President of the United States of America proves, in multitudes, the lengths that we can accomplish if we work hard. On another and more personal level, people from Hawai'i can never blame haoles as being the reason why we can't get ahead in life. I'll miss it, but I don't wanna hear that shit no more. However, of course there's still gonna be racism and discrimination in the world in specific situations, which we can't help, but there's no reason why we can't succeed overall in life.
Man, Hawai'i must be having a state-wide luau right now. I'm not gonna lie, I was a bit jealous and I kinda wish I went to Punahou when the Punahou marching band came walking through the parade and the camera showed the Obama family throwing up the shaka as they passed by. To top it off, the on-site news anchor for CBS was talking about how she went to Punahou too! You guys are everywhere! The only situation I could think of where a bunch of guys from my high school (Damien) would be in the same work place like that is in an auto body shop, let alone the President and the frickin CBS news anchor. I sat there in self pity as I recalled a conversation a couple weeks ago with a Punahou alum as he tried to think of the most famous person to hail from my alma mater. "Is Kealoha Pilares (RB for UH's football team) the most famous person to come out of Damien?" What an asshole! But I don't know what was worst, him saying that a mediocre RB for a mediocre WAC team was our pride and joy or the fact that I replied with a sharp, "No! Frank DeLima is!"
Damnit, Damien....damnit.
But, nonetheless, today was a great historic day. A day that I'll be happy to tell my children about, and my children's children and their children after that, as long as I live. I'm really excited and happy for this country and I'm anxious to see what Obama does with our current situation. Things could only go up right?
But good luck, Obama, and in the words of his daughter Malia, "First black president, huh...better be good."
P.S. - While typing this blog, I noticed that every instance of Obama is highlighted by my spell corrector. I wonder how long it's gonna take for them to correct this so that "Barrack Obama" doesn't shot up as misspelled cause God knows that "Nixon" wouldn't be an actual word if it weren't for the ex-president.