Teenyboppers

I wrote HERE the other day about the right's need to pin both our rooting for Obama and our disdain for Bush on screeching, uncontrolled emotion. Which I of course disagreed with.

Now I see people like Bill Kristol and Hugh Hewitt scoffing at the nation's excitement over Obama's inaguaration (which I seem incapable of spelling correctly, it appears) as "acting like silly teenyboppers," inferring it somehow makes Obama a silly president.

Now, I understand it's tough for these people to see millions of people actually excited about a president - certainly something incredibly foreign to them by this point. And I understand the urge to sublimate the "teenyboppers" excited for Obama somehow with the "serious adults" who approve of Bush (rare as they may be.)

But even if we all were acting like teenyboppers - which we're not, but let's just say we are - what the fuck difference does it make? As in, what does how excited we act or don't act over the next several days have to do with Obama as a president?

The greatest instance of "teenyboppers" would hafta be when the Beatles first came to America 45 years ago next month. 12 year-old girls running through the streets, screaming their lungs out and pissing themselves (literally.) Passing out at concerts, writing "I LOVE PAUL" all over their titties, whatever. Of course any grown man seeing this would scoff at how silly the girls were acting, and assume that after about 3 months The Beatles would go away, replaced by a newer fad and never heard from again. Not a crazy thing to think if you were the average 35 year-old guy at the time.

But what they didn't know was of course the Beatles WEREN'T fly-by-night pretty boys merely shaking their moptops to girls. They had spent years and years playing together for 7 hours a night in clubs throughout Germany and England, and had honed their craft to the point of being actual musicians. So even though the crowds were acting like lunatics, the Beatles themselves were very capable, and in fact spent the next couple of years confounding the world as they got EVEN BETTER by leaps and bounds.

Obama might be a shitty president. He might be as good as we think he'll be. And he might be even BETTER than we think he'll be. But to somehow degrade his presidency because of how excited people are is pure, petty jealousy by those who know they screwed the pooch with their guy. In other words, "sorry you picked Milli Vanilli, shithead."