Obama's inauguration speech

[celemon]

Even an old cynic like myself is pleased at the inauguration speech...if nothing else, I am so pleased at a US president who doesn't feel that stumblings, mispronunciations, and malapropisms are the epitome of rhetoric...

Comments

[ragnvaeig]

I really do think some measure of dignity has been restored, with this kind of higher rhetoric.

[celemon]

Oh yes, dignity - that's what it's called. That's what he has, that Shrubya doesn't. I knew it had a name ;)

[smarriveurr]

Yeah, it'll be nice to have a president that can actually use big words without letting his coaches down in the end.

[celemon]

Bush may have looked like a guy like everyone else to some of his supporters (did he have any at the end?), but to the rest of the world's population he really only looked like an idiot. I like my politicians with brains not on the side...

[smarriveurr]

Yeah, I prefer having a president I can discuss foreign affairs with to one I can "have a beer with." Then again, from what I hear, W was an enormous wet blanket on the DC social scene. I guess, y'know, with the alcoholism and the addiction issues, he couldn't afford to be anywhere near anything while he was in office.

[celemon]

Prayer meeting before the teetotaller dinner? That doesn't sound like a barrel-full of monkey fun.

[silme]

It's nice to have a president who doesn't think demonstrating intelligence is being an elitist.

[graylion]

actually I think the fact that he appears to have a moral compass is more important.

[silme]

Oh, I agree. But you might like reading The Age of American Unreason: Dumbing Down and the Future of Democracy. There's a rather depressing chapter on the anti-intellectualism movement we've seen during the Bush era.

[graylion]

that was actually one of the things that gave me hope: The fact that a neocon USA would leave the world stage by the sheer force of its anti-intellectualism.