Is Barack Obama the President yet?

Over the course of the last few days, I've been sort of immune to all of the Obama Inauguration jubilation going on all over the place in these parts. I'd been offered tickets to attend the ceremony later today multiple times and passed on each opportunity, content as I was to just watch it all unfold from the comfort of home rather than having to deal with the gigantic crowds and dong-shrinking temperatures. I'm sure that my internal defenses have been kicking in a bit as well...after all, there's no way that the guy can't disappoint us at least a bit. I've guess I've just tried to put it all out of my mind and move on from the election, something I'd invested an awful lot of myself in terms of time and energy in.

But then tonight something clicked and I found myself reinvigorated with a bit of a "FUCK YEAH!" attitude towards the whole thing. The triggering mechanism for all of this was seeing a YouTube clip of Jay-Z performing a bit of an impromptu remix of "My President is Black" at some sort of Inauguration event after-party last night. The unbridled celebration in the video literally gave me chills, and now I find myself unable to sleep and counting down the minutes til the swearing-in later today. It struck me in such a profound way, especially when contrasted with Martin Luther King's "Dream" speech, something still very fresh in my mind after listening to the thing in its entirety yesterday. It's just so astounding to think that 40 years ago Dr. King was dreaming of black and white children merely playing together in the schoolyard, and here we are today about to usher in this new era. It's completely startling.

Anyway, here's the aforementioned Jay-Z clip. Enjoy. Lyrics are below the clip...



My President is Black,
My Maybach too,
And I’ll be goddammned if my diamonds ain’t blue.
My money’s dark green,
And my Porsche is light grey,
And I’m headed for DC,
Anybody feel me?

My President is Black,
In fact, he’s half white,
So even in the racist’s mind he’s half right.
Even in these racist times we alright—
My President is Black,
But his house is all white.

Rosa Park sat so that Martin Luther could walk,
Martin Luther walked so that Barack Obama could run,
Barack Obama ran so all the children could fly,
So I’mma spread my wings you can meet me in the sky.

And I was thinking that maybe I'd do one of those live blog thingies during the ceremony. That was kinda fun when I did it on election night. So come back later. I'm off to get a few winks in the meantime.