HBO “We Are One” Concert
“We Are One” has begun: the HBO special/Woodstock of a new Obama Generation, the free festival that is kicking off this Inaugural weekend with Hollywood glitz. It was born with this prayer: bless and challenge this nation, bless the billion world citizens who live on less than a dollar a day and bring safety, humanity and joy to the man, Barack Obama.
The Vice President and Mrs. Biden followed. Then President-elect Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. (The first girls are here, sweet, seated and laughing.) The sea of humanity here cheered their arrival.
You can’t see how many are here unless you leap into the air like MJ. It is not raucous, but rather church-like. Music, the national anthem sung better than any crowd I have ever heard, a light wind, gray sky, maybe 29 degrees and dropping – this is the feel of it all.
The mirth of a winner is here, too. Jamie Fox did his best Barack imitation, reciting from the Grant Park victory speech. He had Sasha rolling in the aisle! He called out to all Chicagoans to stand up and we did, with pride.
There has been Bruce Springsteen singing “The Rising,” maybe a new administration anthem. There there’s John Mellencamp, Mary J. Blige, James Taylor and Kate Nettles. Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington in more serious tones, with Hanks reading the hauntingly appropriate words of Abraham Lincoln in his own era of crises.
