Jen Clay
Staff Writer
Television is a glamorous medium. From the couch-side of the small screen, historical events appear magical, thrilling. “Oh, I wish I was there!” we think to ourselves.
So when I decided to study in D.C. this semester, I knew my cultural conscience wouldn’t let me pass up attending the presidential inauguration.
And after two weeks of acclimating myself to D.C.’s particulars — among them escalator etiquette (stand on the right, walk on the left, or face public ridicule), dress (“casual” doesn’t mean jeans) and weather (wearing flip-flops during winter will garner third-party laughter), I felt ready to attend Thursday’s swearing-in ceremony.
But my first sign of trouble occurred less than a mile from my apartment in Arlington. One look at my Metro stop, and I realized I wasn’t the only Western American wanting to witness history.
I had never seen so much color in D.C. before. Gone were the young Metro-riding professionals outfitted in dull blues, grays, blacks and (less often) whites. The Southwest and Midwest had won, and the subway was a feast of tacky multi-colored jackets, scarves, and mittens. Being the ultimate trooper, I accepted the change to my inaugural expectations, zipped up my spring-yellow ski jacket and soldiered on.
Outside the Metro, the streets were awash in slush and snow. Newspaper vendors lined corners, loudly selling commemorative editions of the Post, the Times and any other publication hoping to sell a few extra papers. Mostly silent protesters carried professional and homemade banners alternately reading “Fascist” and “Worst President Ever.”
My friend and I followed the large green banners denoting the entrance for our like-colored tickets, excitedly anticipating our final location for the ceremony. After all, a senatorial aide had promised us just the day before that “these are the good tickets.”
If these were the good tickets, I wonder what the view for bad-ticket holders was like.
From my perch the length of a football-field-and-a-half away from the stage (not to mention to the President’s diagonal right), I couldn’t see, unless I was supposed to gaze upon the nape of the tall redhead’s neck in front of me. I quickly found that I also couldn’t really hear, and within a matter of minutes, couldn’t feel my toes.
After surviving two arias, two oaths-of-office and three-fourths of an inauguration speech, my friend and I caught each other’s attention, nodded simultaneously and began an earlier-than-anticipated trek back to the Metro. With a bona fide Union Station-purchased Post under my arm, I traveled home uneventfully, passing now-parade-going tourists and inaugural-ball-dreaming socialites.
That afternoon, I enjoyed the parade from the comforts of my couch. A cup of hot chocolate and a Hot Pocket in hand, I didn’t let the sleek look of the televised proceedings fool me. “Nothing is what it seems,” I said to myself with an air of recently acquired Aristotelian expertise. C-SPAN cut to a lengthy shot of President Bush at the parade. Smiling and laughing, the President looked happy to be there.
I bet he couldn’t wait to get home either.
01-27-2005