CNN, Get Over It!!!

If you haven't heard, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (yes, the one put in place by Bush II though he really didn't have the pedigree of the other justices) flubbed the Oath of Office on Inauguration Day. Not seriously- he basically misplaced the word "faithfully", and said "you" when he should have said "I". But the Obama administration was well aware of the tendency of the conservative blogosphere to come up with outrageous conspiracies- like, "He's not really President because the adjective by the conservative justice was in the wrong place." So, just to be safe and preclude that kind of thing, they had a second swearing in today.

But no, the press, and principally CNN, wouldn't let it lie. They stated that the President has done a second swearing in three times in the past. Actually, according to CNN itself, those previous two cases were something different. Upon the death of the President, his replacement was sworn in by someone who wasn't the Supreme Court Justice, so the swearing in was redone- though it wasn't deemed to be legally necessary. At no time in the past has swearing in been redone because of a mistake in the oath- even when Chief Justice Taft messed up Hoover's swearing in. But Obama, knowing how wacko many of the extreme right can get, figured better to be safe than sorry. He wasn't counting on CNN to make a mountain out of a mole hill.

CNN is now loudly stating, ad nausea, that it was wrong for the press not to be invited to the second meaningless swearing in, as this was a moment in history that the public had a right to observe (according to Wolf Blitzer). But there was press there- it's just they were the lowly print press, and there was only a photo taken, supplied by the white house. Evidently, CNN wanted video there.

However, this was not a meaningful event, and much of the public really doesn't give a rip about it, unlike CNN. One has to wonder if CNN would only be happy if they had 24/7 security video cams in the Oval Office, to catch every irrelevant moment of the Presidency? But someone should remind Blitzer that the Presidency is not The Truman Show.

How do I know that this second swearing in was meaningless? As stated above, history clearly indicates that a misplaced word (or even, in the case of Hoover, an added word) does not require a redo. CNN seems to be caught up in extreme conservative legalism, thinking that every word matters in this video age. They need to go back and consider that, in the last 200+ years, most of the time that swearing in hasn't been recorded. What are the odds that there were other small mistakes from time to time, that people didn't care about because there was no video camera? But the primary reason why I know the second swearing in was meaningless- the President becomes President at 12:00 on the 20th. He is required constitutionally to be sworn in, but the 20th Ammendment superscedes that and makes him President at the stroke of noon. How do I know this? Because I was told this on Inauguration Day- by CNN.