Before We Begin: A Preamble to What Happened

For the vast majority of the 4.8 bazillion people that flooded our nation’s capital yesterday, this was as close as we were ever going to get to President Elect Barack Hussein Obama: A trailer-sized Jumbotron (one of many, with accompanying gigantic floating speaker boxes) adorning the National Mall, spreading our newly christened President’s sound and vision to a live-in-the-flesh electorate whom travelled through snow, freezing temperatures, interstate cuisine, Motel 8s, home foreclosures, $2.00/gal. gas, war in distant lands and/or, in my case, trudged through fleshly expelled human fecal matter in the bowels of Washington, D.C.; all of it endured — voluntarily, even happily — just to get a glimpse of a man.

Actually, The Man.

Unlike John Cusack, most people in America didn’t get tickets in order to be seated close enough to view Obama’s facial stubble. Nor do they have semi-automatic camera cranes to deploy at Wolf Blitzer’s behest. You see, for us tired, poor, freezing, and absofuckinglutely huddled masses who felt that watching it on TV just wasn’t going to cut the democratic mustard and insisted on actually being there in person, it was a truly proletarian affair.

It was this simple desire that compelled 43 ticketless students, faculty, and staff members from Bellarmine University to attend the Inauguration anyway. Since I’ve been on the road with them for the past two days, I’ve come to know a few of them moderately well. Consequently, I’ve been able to observe firsthand the effects of Big History upon one of President Obama’s key electoral demographics (youngins), which technically means that everyone grew up a little yesterday, not to mention the fact that yesterday’s historicity has touched us all in a million different ways that we’ve only begun to hear about from the great Punditocracy.

On the other hand, it was this same simple desire that clogged D.C.’s arteries worse than a liquefied Double Whopper iv-drip, caused a near riot, and generally allowed people to exhibit a lot of Nobama qualities.

I’ll be recounting all the whos, whys, whats, and other W’s (well, except for one…) daily, right here on Fatlip. For now, the Bellarmine students are sleeping, and I should join them: My nerves are pretty much in tatters, my right eye is bloodshot, my lower lumbar feels like a tightly wound barge cable, and I’m not Robert Byrd. Good night, y’all…