On-Screen the Second Time Around, the Silly and the Sublime

Second inaugurations are rarely as exciting as the first ones, and when the first was a never-before-seen historic moment, television has a hard time trying to whip up a similar sense of wonder and novelty. (Even MTV carried the 2009 event live, but not this year’s.) The result was a weird combination of canned statements about the majesty and pageantry of democracy and more spontaneous rubbernecking at celebrity faces — and Justice Antonin Scalia’s choice of poofy Renaissance headwear. Even on Fox News, anchors immersed in parsing the president’s speech — one said it was “a call to arms for the liberal agenda” — were pulled off point by the sight of Jay-Z and Beyoncé. The normally imperturbable Brit Hume seemed so star-struck while describing Beyoncé as “stunning” that his colleague Chris Wallace reminded him what happened recently to an ESPN football commentator who gushed a little too wolfishly over a Miss Alabama. “Watch out, Brent Musburger got into trouble for that, my friend,” he said.