The We Are One Concert
January 19, 2009
People with issues
Along with, give or take, 400,000 like-minded people, I attended the concert for Barack Obama on the Mall yesterday. It featured lots of celebrities from the worlds of movies and music: Bruce Springsteen, U2, James Taylor, Jamie Foxx, Forrest Whitaker, Beyonce, Usher, Stevie Wonder, Tom Hanks, and lots more. The musicians did one or two songs each and the acts moved along smoothly and with surprising speed — it was being aired live on HBO so I guess that explains why.
I arrived on the Mall about 10 minutes before the first act appeared, and considering people were there six hours prior to that, I was surprised they left room for me.
I was nowhere near the action which was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, in fact I was closer to the Washington Monument but I had a pretty decent spot in front of a Jumbotron. You don’t go to see the stars in person you know, you go for the event. Or so I’m told.
The walk from the Farragut North Metro to the Mall contained more street sellers than I’d ever seen before. I would never have imagined there was so much Obama stuff out there for sale. Obama buttons three for a buck! Obama earrings, five dollars! 
More T-shirts than you can count, five bucks on the way to the concert, three on the way out. Hotties to keep your hands warm! And your toes! Five bucks for two. You know how professional activists move from one demonstration to the next wherever it may be? Well, I suspect many of the sellers were professional hawkers, I’ve certainly never seen many of them before. Anyway, if you didn’t get your Obama trading cards on the way in, they were still waiting for you on the way out. There were also professional preachers from Los Angeles who have issues with much of society it seems, at least according to their placards. (see picture)
An important and popular place.
I think a good time was had by most, if not all, at the concert. Certainly the people around me had a good time, some young ladies in front of me even got a pretty successful wave going. I’ve just thought of some more people on stage: Garth Brooks had a lively set, Mellencamp did his Little Pink Houses, Herbie Hancock, Mary J. Blige sang Lean On Me, and opera singer Renee Fleming did a great rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone. Joe Biden kept his speech short.
The getting in and out was smooth for me and, I heard later, was a success for most. The Metro seemed to keep running — probably better than it does on a regular work day– so this bodes well for the inauguration tomorrow.
