The Clusterfauguration 2009

For an event known for its many balls, somebody really dropped one yesterday. Actually, several of them.

As the Ris Brothers reported earlier, the Associated Press' comical estimate doesn't begin to tell the tale of ticketholders' misery. When they say "At least a thousand" ticketholders couldn't get in, it's like Rain Man saying a car costs "about a hundred dollars."

I was at the Blue Gate at around 10 am, trying to meet up with Caleb. There had to be 20,000 or so people in that line, which was hardly moving at all. I showed my AOL press card to a policeman (actually, 2. The first one wasn't impressed and told me politely to get on the line), who let me through the barricade. Otherwise, I would have spent the inauguration cursing into my Twitter. I got onto the blue standing section just as the intros were starting. There's no way more than a fraction of that blue line actually got in.



The mood in my section was pretty good. There were two Jumbotrons, both of which were obscured by trees from nearly every angle. Man, can't we cut those annoying things down? I thought about climbing a tree, but I kept having flashbacks to the end of "Battle for the Planet of the Apes," so I skipped it.

So, we couldn't see that well, but at least we could hear everything. Caleb tells me that outside the ticketholders' area, on the Mall, there were thousands of people huddled together with no giant TV or speakers, who could only see and hear each other.

After the speech, I went to meet up with Caleb, and ended up on a several-hours-long odyssey around the city. Apparently, there are at least 2 of every street in DC, and it makes all the difference in the world if you're on NW or SW or whatever.

I finally took a subway to L'Enfant Plaza. The crowd to get into that station was unbelievable. In order to get out, we had to navigate a narrow corridor around the thousands of people trying to get in. Like, you-have-to-turn-sideways-narrow. I'm surprised even that corridor stayed open, as there were no ropes or barricades to enforce it, and the people waiting to get in were packed very close together.

Once I found Caleb, we tried to get back to my hotel, but we were inside a city-sized area that was completely sealed off for the parade. It was like Escape From New York, we were prisoners in the city. Caleb was Snake Plissken, I was the Duke of DC.

Now, don't get me wrong, being there for Barack Obama's speech will be one of the highlights of my life. But there were so many ways that this could have been made better for the people on the ground. I can't imagine the disappointment of a ticketholder who traveled to DC from far away, only to spend the whole time being given the wrong directions and waiting in a mass of humanity for an entryway that never comes.

There's also really no excuse for there not being enough TV's and speakers for everyone to see and hear the speech. With all of the money they spent on balls, it takes a lot of balls to shortchange the "little people" who came from all over to see their new president sworn in.

Finally, it really isn't cool to just seal off thousands of people, in freezing weather, for the better part of a day. Caleb told me the same thing happened in Minneapolis at the RNCC. City police departments have got to figure out how not to imprison random populations of people.

I'd like to say these are lessons learned, but I get the feeling that a lot of these snafus are the result of indifference, somewhere in the chain of responsibility, rather than ignorance.

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