“Celebrating America,” the TV special from President Biden’s inauguration team that replaced the traditional series of galas, won’t be remembered as great television.
The 90-minute prime-time show on Wednesday, Jan. 20, hosted by Bay Area nativeTom Hanks, had a shambling quality, lurching from segment to segment without much more of an overarching narrative than alternating between everyday folks’ stories and superstar performances and ending with fireworks. Each transition brought a moment of panic as if the camera wasn’t sure where to go next or why it was going there.
The overall feel — as we heard from delivery drivers and nurses, soldiers and astronauts — was as blandly patriotic as jury duty instructional videos and as dutiful as town hall meetings. One montage — of BMX bikers, figure skaters and color guard flag spinners, among others — was so generic, aimless and vaguely uplifting that you might expect to find the images in a stock gallery or as the welcome video on a flight.
“Celebrating America” entertained the most during the musical performances — byYo-Yo Ma, who seemed to be physically lifted by the “Amazing Grace” he played on the cello, by the Austin soul band Black Pumas, whose rendition of “Colors” contrasted mournful wailing with joyful lyrics, an apt acknowledgment of howInauguration Dayblended grief and hope.
The show’s greatest success, though, lay elsewhere: It helped us start making ordinariness and kindness normal again.
The selection of Hanks, the first celebrity to publicly announcehe contracted the coronavirus去年,作为东道主是这一努力的关键。汉ks, who’s so likable that he convincingly playedMister Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,”the one celebrity more likable than he is; Hanks, who’s so nice hetried to helpNew York Times writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner find something not-so-nice to say about him to make her article about him more interesting; Hanks — an actor for all Americans.
汉ks’ best moment was when he dropped his faux-newscaster seriousness and reacted candidly and humanly to the sight of former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, shifting side to side, hands in pockets, in the Arlington National Cemetery’s Memorial Amphitheater, together declaring support for President Biden. Hanks didn’t exactly vocalize when the camera cut back to him; it was a teary exhalation of bafflement and joy.
We’re still getting used to the idea of unity, and Biden will probably have to keep preaching the word to us, as he did again in “Celebrating America,” giving a Reader’s Digest version of his speech from earlier in the day. (Harris, an Oakland native, was the show’s best speaker, as warm and natural with the camera as if it were her most cherished friend.)
An inauguration ball might not have felt right this year anyway, had one been possible — not after more than 400,000 Americans have lost their lives and millions more have lost their jobs because of the pandemic. Who wants to watch some bigwigs clinking glasses in an alternate reality far removed from the hemmed-in lives the rest of us lead?
No, the choice this year to open the inauguration to Americans of all stripes — Dolores Huerta, Broadway actors, grocery store cashiers, teachers, children creating programs for their communities — felt like just another step theBiden administrationis taking toward making this country fulfill the promise of its founding documents.
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