Highlights from the inaugural concert

We all headed down to the mall today for the concert in honor of Obama's inauguration. Overall, we've been a bit torn about how much we want to participate in the inaugural festivities. There are certain factions of our family that are quite pleased with the electoral outcome and want to celebrate. Others are more concerned about the possible crowds and inconvenience, such as people from random places parking in our driveway. But we haven't had any driveway problems (no thanks to the DC government despite the impressive armada of tow trucks that they deployed to remove cars from M Street), we haven't noticed any other inconveniences due to the inauguration despite warnings to the contrary, and we only live a 20 minute walk away from the mall, so we figured that we'd head down to the concert. We bundled up the kids, walked down to the mall, dropped the stroller at work on Constitution Ave. (because strollers were reportedly verboten), and carried the kids to see what we could see.

Which, at the end of the day, wasn't much. We ended up in the "overflow" area near the Washington Monument, where strollers would've been allowed. There were a few jumbotrons, but we couldn't make out many of the people on the screens. And we couldn't hear much at all. I found the lack of effective audio to be particularly annoying. After all, there are outdoor concerts every day - why can't I hear the deep thoughts expressed by Denzel Washington? Or Jamie Foxx? Or any of the other similarly august speakers at the event? When you combined the lack of a stroller, which necessitated chasing the boy all over the place, with the lack of effective audio and video, I eventually decided that it was best to concentrate on the crowd rather than any of the deep statements being expressed by speakers at the Lincoln Memorial.

And, I have to say, the crowd was pretty cool. An extraordinarily diverse crowd - black and white, young and old, all of whom seemed to be in a good mood. Teddy would trundle into someone leading that person to apologize profusely for getting in his way. "Not your fault," I would say, and we would get a grin or a nod of the head in response. Just a cool vibe with everyone enjoying the scene in their own way.

In the end, as I told Abby, the concert epitomized the Democratic party (and, more broadly, the left wing in the United States). An amazingly diverse group with (more or less) good intentions if you can get past the lack of organization (i.e. the poor crowd control and the bad audio and video) and the insufferable self-righteousness (i.e. the people waving political placards about torture, capitalism, poverty, etc.). As the crowd control and technological snafus suggested, it's never clear who's really in charge in the Democratic party. In the end, the diverse groups usually lead to an ideological implosion. But not this time, it would appear, as they managed to elect Obama.

And perhaps Obama will solve all of these problems in the Democratic party. Perhaps he'll managed to capitalize on the strengths of the left (e.g. diversity, tolerance, careful thought) without succumbing to its weaknesses (e.g. excessive thought and overemphasis on unrealistic or even counterproductive goals, all in the name of self-righteous "good intentions"). Currently, I'm not too optimistic. After all, he's inheriting a major pile of sh*t which, for better or worse, will likely overwhelm any other deep thoughts and good intentions that he might have. And he's got a Congress that epitomizes the worst of the Democratic party.

But I'm willing to cut the guy some slack - perhaps he can capitalize on the cool vibe that we experienced at the concert to actually accomplish something. Like I said, I'm not optimistic. But I guess that I am hopeful, which was, I suppose, the core of Obama's entire campaign.