REJOICE IN THE DAY

Imagine you’re Obama this morning, standing in front of a crowd so big that it can’t be counted and so cold that individuals keep passing out from hypothermia. My fantasy was that Cheney would rise, rip off the arm of his wheelchair (a cleverly disguised machine gun) and wipe out every Democrat in sight, quite a feat since at that moment probably almost everyone there except Bush and his mother was a Democrat to some degree. That didn’t happen. The worst that has happened so far is that Kennedy had another seizure at the luncheon and Senator Byrd also had to have medical attention.

The hardest sort of speech to give is the one spoken to people who are mostly in agreement with you. What new is there to say? Forget new. The way to go is “true.” The speech -- the ceremony -- that is mostly accurately aligned to the experience and knowledge of the audience is the one that is memorable and meaningful. This is why Obama did the right thing when he sat down with small groups of people during the campaign and gave them the time to describe their deepest fears and dearest wishes. I know he did this because DRK was in one of those groups and reported that Obama really listened, so he knew what to say. The most damning remark I hear about funerals is that the celebrant could have been talking about anyone. We don’t want an inaugural speech that could have been about any country. Today we heard one that was closely, almost painfully, American. No one could claim they didn’t know what Obama was talking about.

The rhetorical strategy of the transcendent drawn from the specific fits with the general context of south side Chicago, which mixes the man-on-the-street sociology of Studs Terkel with the high abstractions of Paul Ricoeur. Every major city has a kind of style but Chicago’s style doesn’t reach far into the northside except along Rush Street where the jazz joints are. Northwestern University belongs to a different world: money, status, and a strong Jewish connection. Technology rather than science, musicals rather than either Shakespeare or Second City. I have no idea where the Native American ghetto is in Chicago, but I expect there is one. I once saw one of the Red Horn boys sprinting across traffic on Lakeshore Drive, maybe on his way to the D’Arcy McNickle library.

Not just Obama but also the invocation, the benediction, the official poem, and -- most eloquently -- the music all used this same rhetorical approach of the ordinary (or as university folks might say, “the quotidian”), mentioning sewing up a hem, waiting for a bus, taking up pencils to begin, and beating tanks into tractors. Obama, as well as the Reverend Lowery, quoted words from pop songs. (“Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again” and “Black won't be asked to give back; Brown can stick around; Yellow will be mellow; The Red man can get ahead man; And White will embrace right.”) There were objections to these phrases by those who think they are above all that “low” stuff. They want the leaders to be like Hollywood heroes, irreproachable and rich, worthy of the Daughters of the American Revolution and your local historical society.

But Chicago’s aesthetic likes to mix the finest (and incidentally most popular of their kind) in a classical quartet playing Aaron Copeland as arranged by John Williams, famous for movie scores. Same with an Aretha Franklin version of “My Country Tis of Thee” which is really “God save the King.” I appreciated the Lincoln scholar on NPR who was able to pick out the several subtle echoes of famous Lincoln speeches woven in by Obama. They had a ring to them, but I couldn’t have told you where they came from. The George Washington quote was explicit.

But I think the black emphasis misses one thing that I see: Obama is not just black. He is what I call “the people of tomorrow,” who are more common in California and Hawaii than Chicago. I’m thinking of Tiger Woods, Will Smith, more Harry Belafonte than Sidney Poitier: thin, sharp, humorous, and hard to shake. Not all the mix is physical: some of it is cultural, mostly the Asian part. Native Americans easily identify with him. In Portland I saw Native Americans mix with Hispanics and SE Asians and Somalis enough to form a recognizable type, which is very much like Obama and easy for whites to relate to. Think Jennifer Lopez, Colin Powell. Not all blacks are comfortable with this.

As it happens, sort of accidentally, I recently watched three political movies. The one about Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings was the most problematic, but had that same emphasis on the quietly homely detail. The story ends with Jefferson, who was wildly improvident, reduced to real poverty, digging in his kitchen garden next to Sally, his slave/wife. Gore Vidal’s Lincoln is a tragic compromiser who knows that his decisions will destroy him, but feels the price must be paid for the greater good. I hope this part of Lincoln’s legacy doesn’t touch Obama.

The third movie was “Ran,” the gorgeously expensive Kurosawa version of Shakespeare’s King Lear. It begins in peace, the “lords” sitting together on the high windy grass in a circle like Plains Indian chiefs. Then over-idealistic decisions on the part of the leader stir up unrest and greed that destroys everyone. Rarely has a movie been so sodden with the blood of so many while all the time the most triumphant of banners fly above the horses of the warriors. Only the humble and innocent survive, and not all of them. It is a cynical movie.

Towards the end one of the characters asks, “Why do the gods send this war and evil upon us?” And another answers, “The gods regard us and wring their hands. It is we who do this and they are simply powerless to stop us.” I’m opposed to the personification of the forces of the cosmos, but I think this puts the proper culprits on the spot: us. Obama doesn’t turn away from this.

But it has become a truism that everything in existence is connected and that even small changes will ripple around the planet. The European leaders of nations are saying as much. Today is the real New Year’s Day. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.