best man

(click below)
Bill Cunningham's Inaugural take

I pulled the link above from one of my favorite blogs Kottke.org .

It got me to thinking.

I'm not an overly political guy, so I haven't been
overly passionate about our recent presidential election.
At one point, I expressed all-important FaceBook
"political view" as "are these our only choices?"

I must admit that, leading up to the inauguration,
I was thinking that the whole thing was way over-hyped,
because, I was thinking of it simply as a Democrat taking
office over my Republican guys.
Not that I really liked my team's guy very much.

Watching the event, I realized that, even if I was thinking of
Obama as just a Democrat, much of the country needed to see
him as the first African-American president, and be consumed
in the victory of that accomplishment, so that the moment could
be appropriately celebrated and marked. And I can appreciate that.
So I now am appreciating Obama, and the moment much more,
for the historical impact.

Two years ago, the Super Bowl was special because, for the first time ever,
there was not just one, but two African-American coaches in the Big Game,
and one would be the first black coach to lead his team to the championship.
In 2009, I will be rooting for Mike Tomlin to coach
his Pittsburgh Steelers to a Super Bowl victory, because I like his team,
and I like him as a coach and a person. But I'm not hearing nearly as
much this year in the press about him being an African-American coach.

I see that as progress.

Hopefully, in the future, the country will have healed and
developed to a point where we no longer have to celebrate the
"first African-American...",or even the"first woman", but rather,
we celebrate that the best person got the job.

Which I believe happened on January 20th.

jay