The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Since the dark days of Clintonian diddling in the Oval Office, American citizens have done naught but despair at the state of democracy. From townships to state government and in our nation's capital, people were far more willing to trust stock brokers and mortgage lenders than to put even an ounce of faith in government's ability to do right by them. And who can blame them? From Jack Abramoff to Larry Craig, politicians firmly cemented a reputation for being all too willing to throughly sodomize anyone and everyone to get what they wanted.

The average politician maintains a tenuous grasp on reality, only deigning to view the world with lucid eyes every few years in the all too brief window of time surrounding elections.

Yesterday I was with a local writer/musician (interview forthcoming next week) whose first book just hit the shelves. It’s self-published, and when the author sat down at the table in our organic, cage-free coffee shop, the first thing the she mentioned was how she was still trying to figure out how to market it.

It was more amusing than disheartening, I think, but nevertheless it happened: Obama's first words as President were lost in a linguistic burp. Deemed 'The Flub Heard Round The World' by the Associated Press, Chief Justice "Roberts got the words of the [swearing-in] oath a little off, which prompted Obama to do so, too."

Only a few hours into his presidency, the mystic Obama aura is being felt far and wide. Like Elrond forming his fabled Fellowship of the Ring, bringing hobbit, elf, human and dwarf together under one banner, united in common cause to defeat the foul Sauron, so too has Obama's influence already started to bring together hereditary enemies. Israel hastened its pullout from Gaza. Obama recently embraced McCain as a brother and advisor.