Obama Delivers Inaugural Address via Text Message

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In a startling move that delighted some but frustrated many, Barack Obama delivered his inaugural address by text message today rather than speaking it aloud as has been the custom for more than 200 years.

Shortly after noon, President Obama, wearing a dark suit and red tie, walked to the podium and asked the crowd, estimated by the United States Park Police at more than 2 million, to “take out their cell phones, pagers, or PDAs.” He then took a step back and remained standing silently on the dais for the next 25 minutes as his speech was transmitted in short bursts to the crowd and anyone elsewhere who was capable of receiving text messages.

The move, which seemed calculated to underscore claims of a generational shift, was a closely held secret among the president’s inner circle. There was considerable confusion on the Mall as on-lookers struggled to dig their phones and BlackBerrys out of purses and pockets or to read the speech over a neighbor’s shoulder.

Mr. Obama’s fondness for digital communication was a recurrent theme on the campaign trail. While his technophobic opponent, Arizona Senator John McCain, boasted at one point of not knowing how to use e-mail, Obama is very comfortable with the staccato rhythms and abrupt, nuance-free style of electronic media. His speech was littered with the sort of abbreviations (“u” for “you,” for example, and “h8trd” for “hatred”) and lingo (replacing plural “s”s with “z”s as in “biznizz” for “business”) that are a distinctive feature of cyberspeak

After starting off with the customary inquiry “hw r u?” the president texted his “fllw citznz” on a variety of issues of immediate concern to the nation including “d dire st8 of d econmy,” the fact that “r schls fail 2 mnE,” and “also r collective failure 2 mke hrd choices n prep d n8tN 4 a nu age.”

Although he generally steered clear of criticizing his predecessor outright, Obama said that other nations were “lol” at the United States for our failures to secure peace in the Middle East, our lack of clear progress in Iraq and the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, as well as our unpopular strategies of unilateral “ngagemnt.”

(Former President Bush sat impassively throughout the speech without appearing to consult any sort of digital device. At one point, outgoing Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao leaned forward and seemed to explain what was going on, after which Mr. Bush pursed his lips and smiled slightly.)

Because of the lag in both download speeds and reading skills, bursts of applause seemed to come more or less at random, though a steady murmur of approval was sustained throughout the speech. And although Obama’s remarks were generally serious and sober, there were flashes of humor such as a flurry of winking emoticons which followed a passage on the “nd 2 put an Nd 2 partisan bickering.”

Although the text format denied Mr. Obama the use of some of the rhetorical gifts for which he is famous, by repeatedly sending the message “y, we cn!,” he was able to get the crowd chanting and finish strongly after a downbeat warning to the country about the hard road that lay ahead and the need for “shrd sacrifice ☹”

A source close to the new president said that if the texted inaugural address is deemed a success, Obama may deliver the State of the Union address, which will be given in just a few weeks’ time, via the Twitter service which limits messages to just 140 characters. “In this time of mounting crisis,” the source said, “The American people demand simple plain speaking. There is nothing clearer, simpler, and less subject to misinterpretation than a Twitter Tweet.”

Published in: on January 20, 2009 at 5:18 pm  Leave a Comment  
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In Farewell to Nation, Bush Condemns Last 8 Years of Tim Robbins’ Career

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On the eve of his departure from the White House, President George W. Bush delivered a scathing attack on some of his harshest critics including actors Tim Robbins, John Cusack, and singer Barbra Streisand.

Speaking in terms usually reserved for the perpetrators of terrorist acts, Bush, who had requested an unprecedented 45 minutes of network airtime, went through a detailed review of the accomplishments of Robbins, Cusack, Streisand, and others since 2000.

Saying that “the record must speak for itself,” the president showed clips from several films including Robbins “Antitrust” and “Zathura,” Cusack’s “Serendipity” and “Must Love Dogs” and Streisand’s nails-on-a-chalkboard performance in “Meet the Fockers.” Bush described these films as “despicable” and “an affront to decent people everywhere, regardless of their political persuasion.”

To emphasize the point, he then read from negative reviews of the actors’ work from critics he said were “Democrats, every one of them.”

Repeating the famous quote of Edmund Burke that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” Bush said that now that he was “no longer constrained by the traditions of his office” which “bar a serving president from responding to personal attacks,” the time had come to speak out against “these evildoers.”

“I have often said that I will await the verdict of history on my term in office. But I am certain that history would judge me very harshly indeed if I did not alert the American people to the threat posed by performers who speak with undiminished authority to a vulnerable portion of the public despite having not made a decent movie in more than a decade,” he said.

After acknowledging that some of his Hollywood opponents had, in the past, done occasional good work (he cited Cusack’s 2000 film “High Fidelity” as an “underrated charmer”), the president suggested that fading movie stars sometimes attack him “in order to further their own careers and remain in the public eye just it is turning its gaze to younger stars like Shia Leboeuf and Katherine Heigl.”

Of Streisand, who has come to personify Hollywood’s liberal establishment, Bush simply shook his head and chuckled, then held up both hands facing outward and said, “I’m a gentleman” several times, as though restraining himself from saying something deeply insulting.

Robbins, though, was not afforded similarly gentle treatment. The actor’s penchant for satirical one man shows was, in turn, satirized by Bush who performed what he said was a brief excerpt from an upcoming Robbins show, “Colonel Bloodmoney’s Bad Day.” Wearing a soldier’s helmet with a dollar sign on it, Bush gave a profane pep talk to an unseen platoon of raw recruits during which he encouraged them to kill any Iraqis who weren’t consuming enough American products.

“And that’s the sort of sophisticated political engagement you can expect from Tim Robbins and his kind, “ Bush said, taking off the helmet, as several aides applauded off-camera.

The soon-to-be-former president concluded his remarks with a ringing call to action, asking Americans “regardless of their party or faction” and “people of goodwill across the globe” to be “ever vigilant to the very real possibility” that since these actors have made so many bad films in the past eight years, “it is very likely that any new movies of theirs will be lousy, as well.”

Published in: on January 20, 2009 at 12:05 am  Leave a Comment  
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