I saw announcements about the Inauguration

Context
I was reading PUBLIB again today, and people were talking about setting up TV sets at their libraries for patrons to watch the President-elect Obama's inauguration ceremony. You can see an example of what I'm talking about at this link.

Commentary
I like this idea of providing a communal space to watch the Inauguration. My bachelor's degree was in history, so I know the importance of sharing these events with each other.

That being said, I have no plans to watch the Inauguration and I certainly don't intend to head out for Washington to attend. I like Obama and voted for him, but the whole inauguration party thing just makes me go "meh."

Some of this can be attributed to the fact that I'm not a very social person, so being in a crowd with a couple million of my closest friends is not very attractive to me. Plus I don't care much for parades except the Tournament of Roses (everything's made of flowers! What's not to like?). I figure the highlight of the day will be Obama's speech and I'm sure that will be both recorded and described. Shoot, I'm sure they'll hit all the high points on The Daily Show, so what else do I need?

I guess another thing that's going on is I wish we weren't treating this as so much of a big deal. I won't claim to "not see color" like Stephen Colbert (Wow! How many references to Comedy Central can I put in one blog post?), but I do try to not see people in Jim Crow terms, where one drop of black blood makes you black. Aren't we inaugurating both our first black president and our 44th white one?

On the other hand, if we're going to talk about Obama being black I don't want this to be a rare occasion. The bigger the fuss we make the more it seems that way, like we're not accustomed to the idea that African-Americans can actually flourish in our nation. Barry Sanders is famous in the football world for NOT celebrating his touchdowns. He always just handed the ball to the ref and went back to the bench. Why? Because he always knew there was another one coming up soon! What if we behaved that way in regard to having an African-American president? Just the first of many . . .

Here's what I think is the biggest deal about the Inauguration: how embarrassing is it that the United States elected its first black president 15 years after after South Africa did?

What did you see today?