The debate that has emerged these past few days following the inauguration of President Barack Obama this week is one of frivolity over substance. About every media outlet from CNN to Entertainment Tonight has pondered whether Beyonce lip synced her performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner." And despite the wall-to-wall coverage, it seems no one has a definite answer nor details regarding this.
While most of America has been catfished on this matter, the media buried the lead--Obama's inaugural speech. Unlike in 2009, his address greatly emulated Walt Whitman because he spoke more specifically to a broader spectrum of America, a protean country of uncharted territory and untested waters.
In most instances America turns its lonely eyes to the President as a figurehead whom it feels will address all of their needs and answer all of its questions. But that is not the role of the President in a changing American landscape. As he writes in his column in today's New York Times entitled "Obama Reboot," Charles Blow says about Obama, "He is the embodiment of their discomfort. He is the manifestation of their fear. He represents a current and future America--more socially liberal, more ethnically diverse, more the offspring of unconventional families--than they can accept." The traditional old-boys style of politics is slowly dying off--literally and figuratively--and is being supplanted by a more diversified citizenship. In the general election, blacks, hispanics, women, and other non-white voters outpaced white male voters. This caught many off-guard, as America is turning a corner into an uncertain future for what it means to be an American.
That said, Obama specifically referenced those who have struggled to fight for their rights. After many have lived for several decades socially complacent, he utilized his speech as a call to arms, if you will, to Americans to become proactive citizens again, saying, Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness. Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time – but it does require us to act in our time. He is asking Americans to accept one another's imperfections and embrace such differences. Not only does Whitman say, "Do I contradict myself?/Very well then I contradict myself," but Obama is telling us we do this every day of our lives, whether we realize it or not, socially, politically, and personally.
Ultimately, Obama is pushing back against our accepted sense of normalcy and in his progressive words he emulated Whitman when he proclaimed, "For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. We must act, we must act knowing that our work will be imperfect." He is pushing back against the pervasive passivity that is all around us and telling us not to solely look to him for answers. As Whitman tells the reader in Section 2 of "Song of Myself,"You shall no longer take things at second and third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectre of books,/You shall not look through my eyes neither, nor take things from me,/You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self." He also says in Section 46, "You are asking me questions, and I hear you,/I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself."
America's comfort zone is being challenged by a compassionate president whose life is the Whitmanesque embodiement of America: Hawaiian-born to a white American mother and a Kenyan father, raised in Kansas, Ivy-educated, adopted Chicago as his hometown, and lived a life serving citizens young and old, rich and poor, black and white as a professor and community organizer before delving into formal politics. If in this media-driven society it takes Beyonce to serve as a pop culture olive branch to motivate Americans out of their complacency, it ain't what Uncle Walt would imagine. But it's a start.
A coda: As he left the inaugural stage to attend the luncheon, he turned around to look out toward the Mall and the thousands of people still milling about, saying, "I want to take a look, one more time. I'm not going to see this again. This is a fitting metaphor for what Obama continues to represent, a wide-open vista of where we have been and where we hope to go in the future. The road goes on forever...
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