Monday, January 19, 2009

Meh.

My Facebook status says I'm sitting back and watching for a while, which was my personal admonition to self to absorb and think rather than scurrying off to blog each new thing rubbing me wrong when all I want is to join in the giddiness over the inauguration.

Uh, no, that didn't exactly last very long.

Rick Warren is America's PastorTM and it's high time I accepted it. The token bone tossed to the gay folk who got their knickers in a twist when the high-profile invocation gig was handed to a vocal homophobe turned out to have less meat on it than the Thanksgiving wishbone. Bishop Gene Robinson got the real opening invocation, we were assured, you know, because it happened first and was the big We Are One populist concert at the foot of Abe Lincoln's statue yesterday, and of course Team Obama had planned that invite way before anyone even knew Rick Warren was going to get center stage, so shush and be happy you're in the big tent. Except that nobody watching TV heard Bishop Robinson's invocation, because HBO didn't broadcast it. And no more than a couple dozen people at the Lincoln Memorial heard it either, because the sound system got shut off right before he began and only got turned back on in time for everyone to hear "Amen." And today we find out that the decision to schedule Robinson just before HBO's official start of coverage came not from HBO but from the Obama team.

And the keynote address for the MLK Day service at Ebenzer Baptist in Atlanta? Delivered by Rick Warren. Because nothing says equality like a guy who fights to deny certain peoples' civil rights.

Guess it's time to get over it. Rick Warren wins. Because working to eliminate poverty (good) trumps supporting African pastors who encourage murdering suspected witches (bad), because claiming to respectfully disagree about Biblical morality (good) trumps equating gay marriage to incest (bad). Complaining that Gene Robinson was rendered silent and invisible is the height of unappreciativeness because he got invited in the first place, and that should be more than enough. We Are One, unless we're gay, in which case we need to stop all the fucking whining, because apparently you're allowed to call dibs on discrimination, and when we bark back it makes us the bigots.

The Inauguration is about so much more. I want it to be about so much more, but how many times are we supposed to hold our noses and look the other way because we can find enough good to trump the bad that keeps tumbling out into plain view? It didn't need to happen this way, and that's the part that bothers me the most and tempers my enthusiasm, my hope, for what comes next.

Tomorrow I'll celebrate the exit of the most corrupt and destructive adminstration in American history. As for the rest, well, I'll be sitting back to watch.

Additional and far more eloquent commentary here, here, here, and here.

1 comment:

libhom said...

Don't forget that Warren is a vicious misogynist who also has worked to promote the spread of HIV in Africa. He even has called upon his followers to emulate the behavior of Hitler's Brownshirts and Lenin's henchmen.