The Wrong Address
An inaugural for the speech impaired
By Gene Weingarten
Sunday, January 18, 2009; W72
Some people were unnerved to learn that Barack Obama has chosen a 27-year-old speechwriter for his inaugural address. I'm not. Obama could have made a much worse choice. He could have chosen me.
***
My fellow Americans:
Fourscore and seven years ago, Wilhelm Furtwängler became conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. I realize that's a boring fact, but I wanted to start this speech with the "fourscore and seven" thing, and it turns out that 1922 was a really uneventful year. Sorry.
Some of you may be wondering why I stand here today in a floral dashiki, the traditional ceremonial garb of the tribesmen of Western Africa. Well, you can relax. I am just messing with your heads.
A better question might be why I have just taken the oath of office with my hand not on a Bible but on what appears to be, and in fact is, a banana cream pie.
The answer is: change. I promised it, and I am going to deliver it -- change in all facets of American life, including the humorless solemnity of our governmental and financial leaders. These are the same leaders who, while wearing somber suits and grave countenances and comporting themselves with utmost dignity, have, for the past many years, held all our heads in the toilet and flushed.
So, change is good. Besides (sticking finger in pie, tasting it), I like banana cream pie.
Today our nation is mired in a dreadful financial crisis. What I want to tell you is that we're in this together. I want to tell you that but cannot do so in good conscience, because, let's face it, I've just landed a four-year, $400,000 job with an awesome retirement plan. Plus, I've got two runaway bestsellers that earn more royalties in one month than the total amount of your mortgage. In short, we're not exactly on equal footing: I'm on a putting green, and you are on a carpet of marbles, ball bearings and lard. Good luck with all that.
Rest assured, however, that I do empathize with your plight, despite what you may have been led to believe. During the presidential election campaign, some people got the unfortunate impression that I am an icy, aloof, emotionless intellectual who has difficulty connecting with the concerns of ordinary people. Nothing could be further from the truth. As Ovid observed two millennia ago, "Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim," words that still have great meaning to those of us with proper educations.
During a similar financial crisis in 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously told Americans that we all had nothing to fear but fear itself. These were wonderful, inspiring words that no one thought too hard about, which was a good thing because, when you get right down to it, they were idiotic. Roosevelt was addressing people facing imminent personal financial ruin, yet his consoling mantra was, basically, the same as Alfred E. Neuman's: What, me worry?
I will not condescend to you that way. Me worry, and you should, too. Mostly, we all need to worry about the insanely unreasonable hopes that you have invested in me. You seem to expect me to reinvigorate the economy; repair America's reputation at home and abroad; institute universal health care; lower taxes; save the polar bears; heal the sick; reanimate the dead; end the madness of robo-calls;
restore the taste of the American tomato; eradicate the use of hand dryers in all public washrooms; find a cosmetic solution to the tragedy of teeth that look like Fig Newtons; impose enormous fines on the owners of trembly little dogs; outlaw the wearing of Crocs;
publicly denounce Ben Stein for the objectionable, talentless, desiccated old fart he is;
incarcerate persons who use the world as their ashtray; and introduce a constitutional amendment prohibiting, forever, the marketing of Windows Vista to the unsuspecting.
I cannot promise you any of that. But I can promise you this:
(Presses the pie into the face of the chief justice of the United States)
We're going to have us some fun.
Gene Weingarten can be reached at
weingarten@washpost.com.
