Actually, I'm a Big Fan of Yo-Yo Ma

Ok, so I lied in the title of this post, I'm really not. But I didn't want this to seem like another trite, boring post about the inauguration. My reasoning for that is I didn't really want to write about the inauguration itself much. It was a great occasion and I'm happy I was able to view it. A lot of what interested me were the things surrounding the actual inauguration though. As I was viewing the ceremonies, I think I was most taken with the beauty of the performance of the quartet. They played some absolutely gorgeous music. Of course the lead in was a bit funny. When I watched it the first time, I was chatting with my roommate Jordan on Facebook. It had stuck out to me that a lot of the crowd cheered quite heavily when they heard the name of Yo-Yo Ma. Maybe it's just me, but I really don't think anybody who is a true fan of Yo-Yo Ma would be cheering for him. Classical music just doesn't typically get that kind of cheering. So really I think this was just a case of the mindless mob recognizing a name and cheering because that's special. Of course I did notice the first time they also cheered a bit for the pianist (I didn't recognize her name) and on a second viewing, I noticed they cheered a fair bit for Itzhak Perlman (but still neither compared to Yo-Yo Ma). The cheering of the mindless mob really seemed to sum up a lot of the Obama election for me.

Of course I also noticed the repeated cheering of "O-bahm-mah" over and over. It really got me to thinking about how perfect of a name he really has for the crowd to chant incessantly. Just kind of one of those lil "That's interesting" things I noticed.

As a final note, more on par with the inauguration, the New York Times had a blog post about the actual inauguration itself. In it they mention the rather botched nervousness possessed by President Obama and Chief Justice John Roberts. I guess, although mostly to Chief Justice Roberts' blame, President Obama never recited the actual oath as recorded in the Constitution. I guess there's some "Lame Duck" Amendment or something that supposedly automatically transfers power, but according to the original Constitution, I'm not sure he's actually president. Of course then I'm not sure who is.

UPDATE: Obama redid the oath. Case closed.

UPDATE PART TWO: Biden takes a shot at John Roberts for messing up on the oath.

UPDATE PART THREE: The oath was performed the second time without a Bible. Guess that might make some of the people that didn't like the idea of it happy.

UPDATE PART FOUR: Some media backlash occurred because of rather limited access for the redo of the oath. I don't think is going to be too big of a deal though.

UPDATE ON YO-YO MA: So apparently the quartet didn't actually play the music live, it was prerecorded.