SHEKI MBEKI ON THE INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

Washington, January 21, 2009(AP). Your reporter was overjoyed at the inauguration ceremonies today. As Shakespeare wrote, “my plenteous joys, wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves in drops of sorrow.” Or, as the old joke put it, the Bush Administration was “like beating your head against the wall because it feels so good when you stop.” The Apocryphal Press was assigned one press pass, but on presentation it was deemed apocryphal so I had to watch it on television.

Justice Roberts, as he held in his hand the constitutional text of the Presidential oath of office, read it wrong. President Obama, by his momentary silence and a pregnant look tried unsuccessfully to lead Mr. Roberts back on the path. This subtle interchange is freighted with symbolism. For a Bush appointee to be unable to do a simple task within his job description reflects the entire Bush administration. Mr. Obama’s attempt to correct the Bush appointee’s error suggests the corrective medicine that the Obama administration will administer. That he was not successful cries out that the task will be difficult. The actual error meant nothing, because Mr. Roberts earns his living misreading the Constitution.

President Obama said we would restore science to its rightful place. Does that mean it no longer belongs opposite the “E’s” on my transcript?

Former (it feels so good to write that) President Bush made a graceful transition from uselessness to irrelevance and flew off into the sunset. Former Vice-President Cheney seemed headed to the Wheelchair Olympics.

Aretha Franklin sang “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” so beautifully and soulfully (in both senses) I cried. It was joyous but strange that people whose ancestors came here hundreds of years ago could finally feel like real Americans, as my Shmuel-come-lately family, the pride of Burke’s Steerage, has done since they got here. Mazel Tov African-Americans. Welcome home.