Made for TV
Dear Viewers:
A reporter confided to Dorothy last week that he had done his own
informal survey of a hundred Washingtonians, and no more than five out
of the hundred said that they were going to go to the inauguration.
Dorothy did her own beauty-shop survey on Saturday. Business was very
light, which is never true in a black beauty shop in the days before any
major event. Over the course of a few hours not one person in the shop
expressed any interest in attending. “They don’t want us there,”
said one woman, to general agreement.
On the Close to Home page of the Washington Post today, Jong-on
Hahm writes (http://tinyurl.com/7w9pkb),
“My initial plan was to go with my family (the children skipping
school, if necessary). We’d drive to my office in Arlington and take
the Metro. Then the crowd estimates came rolling in. Two million, three
million, four million people. Twice as many the passengers as on Metro’s
current record ridership day. Four times the size of the crowd for the
Mall’s biggest Fourth of July celebration. Road closures. Bridge
closures. Walking for hours. Standing for hours. Recommendations against
bringing children. . . . I will join the millions around the world
watching the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States on
TV.”
People are not just, and not primarily, avoiding a big crowd. That so
many people are making the decision to stay away, to stay home, cannot
just be dismissed by the Yogiism, “Nobody goes there no more; it’s
too crowded,” Yogi Berra’s explanation of why he wouldn’t go to a
popular restaurant in St. Louis. People know how to handle large crowds;
we spread ourselves out automatically and fill the space available
efficiently. No, DC locals are by-and-large avoiding the inconveniences
and impositions created by bad government decisions that are making it
extraordinarily and unnecessarily difficult to attend this inaugural.
And there’s no sense that any government official, local or federal,
has any regrets about the difficulty. Instead, their message is that
they’d rather we stayed at home and watched on television. The
inaugural is no longer a public event in which our participation is
invited; it is now a made-for-TV spectacle. The people who attend in
person are only background extras, secondary in importance to the
television audience.
Eugene Robinson wrote on Friday (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/15/AR2009011503150.html)
that, “Whether Washington will survive Tuesday’s inauguration,
however, is an open question. Rarely has a city that cockily considers
itself the center of the political universe been seized by such a
powerful combination of giddiness and anxiety. Barack Obama will be,
after all, the 44th president of the United States; it’s not as if we
haven’t gone through this drill before. But this inauguration seems to
have been amplified by a feedback loop of historical importance,
security paranoia, and sheer numerical overload — a combination that
has strained Washington’s ability to cope.” We need a local
government administration that has the ability to cope, and to push back
on our behalf against federal domination and insecurity. This
administration has shown itself to be incapable of that.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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A Waste of Money and Time
Ed T. Barron, edtb1@mac.com
I returned from a ten-day sojourn to the southern Caribbean to find
the lamp posts on Massachusetts Avenue littered with promotional signs
for DC to become a state. This is a total waste of time and money. The
new president will have far too much to do and too little personal
capital to waste on convincing enough congressmen and senators to make
DC a state.
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Watching the preparations for the inauguration, I can't help but
think that the time has come for each one of us to contribute our unique
cliches so that a combined cliche emerges much larger than any of our
individual cliches. That time is now. That cliche is here. We must
embrace this cliche like no other
before it. In doing so, we will overcome any cliche that blocks our
path.
Our nation is looking to you, its people, for fresh cliches. We
can’t solve old problems with weather-worn phrases. We must have new
cliches, fresh new cliches — cliches that ring true with old cliches,
and yet are modern enough to confront the wide array of cliches we face
before us today.
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Remember my postings about Southeast Library nearly two years ago? I
was upset when the head of the DC Libraries “weeded” the
collections, removing classics and valuable texts in history and the
humanities from the branch I use — the Southeast Branch. The weeding
was explained as then-new Library Director Ginny Cooper’s “refreshing”
of the collections, to bring them up to date. What she did was remove
most of the serious books, substitute DVDs, CDs and comic books, and add
more computers to branches. In less than a year, she claimed greatly
improved circulation statistics at Southeast — and she applied the
same plan at all the libraries.
I tried for months to find out what happened to the books from
Southeast from Cooper’s bureaucrats. I was told various stories —
that they were added to the collection at Martin Luther King, Jr., that
they would be “always available” — but they would just not take up
valuable shelf space at more than one place. Not quite true. Today I
learned from librarians that Ms. Cooper sold the books on amazon.com.
She didn’t bother to remove the stamps and bar codes that identify
them as Southeast library books. As a result, conscientious buyers, who
bought them for pennies, are returning them to the library, saying there
must be a mistake — that these books belong to Southeast Library.
Seems as though she just can’t get rid of those classics.
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Fenty Thinks He’s in the “In” Group
Star Lawrence, jkellaw@aol.com
Tuesday will be the one day in thirteen years that I am glad I am not
in DC. I also intend not to watch TV. Can I resist? We shall see. When I
read about President-Elect Obama’s lame pander at Ben’s Chili Bowl
— “Where the food at?” — I said nope, not watching. If Mayor
Fenty thinks he is now A-list, just wait. It’s a big bus with lots of
room under it.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
DC Public Library Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Events, January 21-22
George Williams, george.williams2@dc.gov
Wednesday, January 21, 4:00 p.m., Washington Highlands Neighborhood
Library, 115 Atlantic Street, SW. Martin Luther King, Jr., film fest.
View films and share your experiences in following in the footsteps of
Dr. King. Ages 13-19. Contact 645-5881.
Wednesday, January 21, 10:30 a.m., Washington Highlands Neighborhood
Library, 115 Atlantic Street, SW. Dr. King Story Time. Enjoy stories,
films and reading activities about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. Ages 1-5. Contact 645-5881.
Wednesday, January 21, 1:30 p.m., Benning Interim Library, 4101
Benning Road, NE. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. Participate in an
essay/poetry contest. Share your thoughts on the following question: “What
Can I Do to Bring Peace and/or Justice to the Benning Road Community?”
Winners will be selected from two categories, children, and young
adults, and asked to read their work aloud. All ages. Contact
442-7740/7741.
Thursday, January 22, 4:00 p.m., Washington Highlands Neighborhood
Library, 115 Atlantic Street, SW. Poems of Dr. King’s Footsteps. Read
and write poems on the events of Dr. King’s footsteps. Ages 6-12.
Contact 645-5881.
Thursday, January 22, 6:00 p.m., Washington Highlands Neighborhood
Library, 115 Atlantic Street, SW. Black History Movie Night: Muhammad
Ali: the Greatest. Watch the story of a legend that took the world by
storm. See the incredible career of perhaps the greatest boxer of all
time. Fresh from his gold medal victory at the Olympic Games,
eighteen-year-old Cassius Clay is ready to seek the heavyweight
championship. 1 hour, 41 minutes. (NR) All ages. Contact 645-5881.
Thursday, January 22, 2009, 6:30 p.m., Cleveland Park Neighborhood
Library, 3310 Connecticut Avenue, NW. Black History: Recovering My
Heritage Book Talk and Book Signing. Gail Milissa Grant, author of At
the Elbows of My Elders: One Family’s Journey Toward Civil Rights,
will recount the battles fought by her father, David M. Grant, an
African American lawyer and civil rights activist in St. Louis, and
describe the challenges she faced growing up and navigating her way
through institutions marked by racial prejudice. A book sale and signing
will follow the program, courtesy of the Trover Shop. Adults. Contact
282-3072.
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DC Public Library Events, January 24
George Williams, george.williams2@dc.gov
Saturday, January 24, 3:00 p.m., Petworth Neighborhood Library, 4200
Kansas Avenue, NW. Petworth Quilters. For more information, contact
541-6300.
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