I will be in Los Angeles at an academic course development conference on the day of the inauguration. In advance, however, I have requested that a T.V. be available so we can watch, live, the swearing-in of Barack Obama as 44th president of the United States, followed by his inaugural address to the nation.
Live is important to me as it confers something most special on an event such that a video replay doesn't quite resonate to it with the same historical meaning. That meaning is on the order of "where were you when Kennedy was assassinated?" or "where were you when it was announced that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor?" Those, of course, were negative events, as was 9/11. However, negative events don't own the turf of history. But the question itself remarks on their significance.
When I was five years old, and quite sick, my parents, as they wrapped me up in blankets and carried me to the car, explained that it was very important that I experience and remember this night. The night in question was May 8, 1945, V.E. day. I never forgot it. The noise makers, the joy, the tears, the honking of car horns, the effusive camaraderie evident everywhere I looked. I realized something very special was occurring.
And years later, when I was a parent, I awakened my daughter, Justine, put her in my arms, carried her downstairs. There we sat and watched and listened to the awed, intoning voice of Walter Cronkite narrating for the TV audience Apollo 11's landing craft, Eagle, touch down on the surface of the moon. In my arms she stared at the screen. I don't really know what she saw or heard that early morning, but she barely moved in my arms. The Day was July 21, 1969, at 2:56 AM, GMT. Twenty minutes later, the Eagle's hatch opened and Neil Armstrong stepped down the ladder and became the first human to walk on the moon. My daughter was two months old and, though she doesn't remember the event, her knowledge and the obvious pleasure she evidences that she witnessed it live has never diminished, nor has her enthusiasm for "being there."
And so it will be, so it must be, when Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th American President. If television has any pretense to greatness as a medium, one which chronicles of events of great consequence, it is to bear visual witness to these events and allow the world to be as one for precious moments when history is being made. Obama's assumption to the office of presidency is one such moment, one such moment where I will not miss "being there." And I will know exactly where I was in that year, on that day, at that time. And so will my daughter.
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