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Let's Not Have a Ball
When so many Americans are suffering do we really need extravagant inaugural celebrations?
With last week’s devastating jobs report, it’s time for us to ask a simple question: Is it right to spend millions on inaugural festivities while our country fights two wars and our economy continues to move like a runaway freight train headed straight for disaster’s wall?
Should we really host a concert on the Mall when more than 350,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have received care from VA hospitals and clinics—some learning to walk again and too many with the unseen scars of war?
Must there be a parade and fireworks while mothers send their children to bed layered in clothing because the heat’s been shutoff, and grandparents watch a lifetime of labor and love disappear as fast as the Dow’s ticker moves across the bottom of the TV screen?
For the first time since George Washington quietly transferred power to John Adams, the ceremony is the event—not the MTV Ball or Oprah’s show at The Kennedy Center.
Do we really need an MTV Ball when families hold steady around a grave until the last note of “Taps” finishes?
Other presidents have canceled inaugural celebrations before. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson called the idea of parties “undignified.” Franklin Roosevelt, perhaps regretting that he had allowed the 1933 inaugural festivities to go forward during the Great Depression (complete with a movie star-filled express train from Los Angeles), didn’t have a ball in 1937 or 1941—and in 1945 he just held a small lunch. What would President Roosevelt do and what words would President Wilson use for today’s challenges?
Yes, the President-elect is sure to surpass the $42 million raised in 2005 to cover the costs of the parade and fireworks. We can have these events. But “can” and “should” are two different words. Should we hold these events in these perilous times?
It certainly felt wrong in 2005. I remember walking to the Mall to listen to President Bush’s speech. Even though I had worked for two years trying to defeat the president’s re-election, I thought he had a great team of speechwriters, still among the best—even if they never sent a tingle up Chris Matthews’s leg.
It was the first inauguration I’d been to since President Bill Clinton’s in 1993. That day, I walked by the Vietnam Memorial and people were etching names on to front pages of newspapers. They left flowers and Teddy Bears and notes excited about the change to come. Maybe there was hope at the base of the Wall that day because the sun was out and we weren’t at war. But by 2005, there was no one around and the only thing at its base was the snow that had fallen the night before.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
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Wendy Button is a writer in Washington, DC. She has written for Senators John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Mayor Tom Menino of Boston as well as other national and international leaders.
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Wendy Button is a writer in Washington, DC. She has written for Senators John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Mayor Tom Menino of Boston as well as other national and international leaders.
I would be far more sympathetic to even consider your thesis, were it not so couched in hyperbolic attempts at heart-tugging.
"Lincoln...who is reported to have danced during the Civil War."
Are you insane? The President ought not to have danced during the five years' duration of that war? The "charred bodies" voicelessly crying out for us to never have fun again - the Veteran wheeling himself into a cardboard box O'grief. So, are you going to personally not ever celebrate the Winter Holidays or your birthday because "life is so miserable"? People are starving in China, so don't eat?
Good Lord, your bathos-instead-of-pathos is repellent because it is overboard in the direction opposite of what you decry. Excess, true, is not appropriate for the upcoming innauguration. But this weepy knee-jerk ultra-liberal guilt-jerking is so off-putting to the rest of us regular liberals who comprehend the wisdom of the concept of "appropriate".
Moderation is clearly not part of your emotional make-up. I really love the ridiculous notion, hey, if you donate $50 large, then surely there must be yet another $50,000 in your mattress for charity. (!!!)
A subdues celebration without the glitter of, say, the Reagan celebrations is in order. But, if you suppress the Nation's desire for celebration, then a dampening of national mood ensues, which, hello, is not so good an idea when we need to brace ourselves for rough times ahead.
A dampening of National mood will ensue if too-drastic measures are applied which will not help citizens to face the hard times ahead.
Your bathos-inducing examples of why nobody ought ever to have fun again in this life, are knee-jerk guilt-ladening and insulting to those of us who contribute to good causes, help the needy, but who are still able to take a breather with moderate good times.
I laugh everytime I read a post by Wendy Button (after I ask myself why I am reading it in the first place.) For anyone who might know Boston Mayor Menino--on Ms Buttons resume--you will know why I laugh. He can't speak and she can't write. We love Tom but not for anything he has ever said!
As the late Jack Benny said, "I'm thinking.". Some people have a right to express their joy. They have been waiting since 1619. These people have also felt the lash of want & need. There may be a compromse which allows most, if not all, people express their joy on the night of 1/20/09.
Maybe it will help if you think of it as a Wake? Why wouldn't we we celebrate the passing of those who were responsible for so many of the miseries you now lament? I don't think throwing 50 million crumbs at the mess you worked to perpetuate with John McCain is significant in the light of 100 billion for AIG?
I love watching you knee-jerk liberals disguise your "Nobody criticizes Obama" ethos in the form of self-rightous musings and non-substantive critiques.
The woman has a point. Deal with it. Oh and before you start attacking me, I voted for Obama.
Nice to see the lemmings have had their Latee's this moring.
Ms. Button is talking about the Balls by the way...the formal balls, not celebrations or a ceremony.
Jesus
Wow. I guess I'm not allowed to comment on this blog...very cool daily beast.
"I don't think throwing 50 million crumbs at the mess you worked to perpetuate with John McCain is significant in the light of 100 billion for AIG?"
You're right symbols are useless things and should never be used in any form.
Thank you.
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