Good history often makes for bad television, as the run-up to Obama’s inauguration makes clear. (Hey, and when is the spellcheck on Word Press going to recognize the president-elect’s name and stop putting a squiggle line beneath it?) All those news anchors and color people (or, on CNN, colored people as Soledad O’Brien, Don Lemon and Tony Harris get more than their usual allotted screen time) bundled up in the Washington Mall talking to all those people who have gathered, each of them saying, yep, it’s going to be a historic occasion. 

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think anyone, regardless of politics, can overestimate the symbolic importance of our first black president being sworn into office. Slavery was the cancer the founders decided to ignore and going forward, it and its legacy of racism nearly killed the country. And as readers of this space know, I was on the Obama bandwagon when it was more of a horse cart. I can’t believe we’ve reached this moment and my only worry is everything else in the world. 

I’ve been having dreams in which I’m in trouble with the law. This could be about my higher power (my shrink’s on vacation, mind if I borrow your couch?) but I think politically it’s about the storms we’re sailing into: the laws of gravity and world economy, not to mention the fractious state of so many states: Iraq, Iran, Israel and I’m just in the I’s. 

I thought the concert at the Lincoln Memorial was a little cheesy at times (Garth Brooks singing “American Pie”? Didn’t you feel a little weird seeing Obama singing along with the chorus, “This will be the day that I die”?) but when U2 launched into “Pride (In the Name of Love)” I got choked up. To hear that song performed in that place in front of that man — by four Irish guys no less! — got me. But my favorite moment came at the end of the tune, when Bono in rabble rouser mode said something about everyone wanting freedom and name-checked Palestine. 

Cut to the president-elect looking like he’d just eaten a bad clam. Welcome to the job, buddy. Have fun at the gala events tonight. Tomorrow the earth is still burning.