Radio Australia Today Editorial
Barack Obama has his first media circus
22 January 2009
Did you see the papers today? No surprise that the new U.S. Prez featured heavily in them. I don’t remember what kind of coverage George W. got at his two swearings-in, but I’m betting that it is nothing like the wall-to-wall plastering that we’re seeing this morning across the world.
Just look at what the journalists have been doing here in Australia, and you’ll get an idea. The two major Melbourne dailies show the Obamas dancing at one of the inaugural balls. One headlines them a New Dawn. The other says: A New Spirit. The national daily, the Australian, headlines with A Nation Reborn.
Pretty tame stuff. Obviously they’re hoping these carefully constructed fronts will be kept for posterity. So they thought solemnity was called for.
It is left to Brisbane’s Courier Mail to take a lighter approach to the dancing Obamas. It’s front page proclaims in a headline next to the waltzing duo: Do You Mind If I Lead?
The papers, of course, do capture THAT moment in great detail. The moment I write of is the stumbling by both Obama and the Chief Justice during the administration of the Oath of Office. The impassive face of the incoming president betrays nothing, but get a look at his wife Michelle Obama. Now there is a face that could be saying any one of twenty things. Check it out:
Is that a smile for the clumsiness of men. Is that a rueful expression that says: You had ONE thing to do. Or is it simply pride at that most historic moment. We’ll have to wait for her memoirs to find out.
Of course one of the great images of the inauguration belongs to the out-going vice-president Dick Cheney. Wheelchair-bound in temperatures of minus-something, he is caught by a photographer for all time, glancing at his watch. He most probably wanted to be somewhere warm, rather than freezing his posterior off watching his political opponents take his job.
In all, a fun coda to a special day.
Now the serious stuff begins.
– Phil
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