Inaugural post

I’m working from home today–journalists don’t take days off! Snow, rain, inaugurations, traffic jams…none of these things stop us!–so I don’t have any flowery prose celebrating the inauguration of Barack Obama to share. I would like to pass on this appreciation of Obama from John Ridley, however. A taste:

Can you have a heritage more American than Obama’s? The literal marriage of the immigrant and native. Born in our most diverse state. One without an ethnic majority, but where people of mixed race make up some 20% of the total population. There is nothing about Obama’s background that isn’t truth to the tired saw of the American melting pot.

And can you have a narrativea more American than Obama’s? In the most Horatio Algeresque fashion he lifted himself up from a swamp of food stamps, went on to study at the best universities. Despite his Ivy League pedigree, Obama skips his shot at easy millions, becomes one of those much maligned “do nothing” community organizers, bucks the system, fights the old school and ends up president. Hey-day Frank Capra couldn’t commit to film a more finely tuned ode to Yankee gumption.

A little over the top, perhaps, but a nice corrective to all those who decry the “Horatio Alger Myth” of America. This really is one of the few nations in the world where a man can start out as a nothing and become its leader.