Up and at ’em early this morning.\u00a0 A dog to water, feed, and walk, a bicycle to ride, an old friend from Las Vegas showing up in the early afternoon, a party at another friend’s house this evening.\u00a0 But first, a little blogging.<\/p>\n
Like everyone else, I watched the televised memorial for the victims of Saturday’s shootings.\u00a0 It started out poorly, I thought, with a long, rambling invocation heavy on mystic crystal hoo-hah and political correctness, followed by what threatened to turn into a long line of local dignitaries strutting before a national audience.\u00a0 And like Rachel Maddow and many other commentators, I was put off by the frequent bursts of cheering, whistling, and clapping from the audience.\u00a0 When the president of the University of Arizona invoked the name of the little girl who was killed, the audience cheered and hollered for a full minute, almost as if, instead of dying at the hands of an assassin, she’d sunk a game-winning basket.<\/p>\n
Then President Obama took the\u00a0 podium and told us that Gabrielle Giffords, just minutes before at the University Medical Center, had opened her eyes for the first time since the shootings, and I started cheering too.\u00a0 Oddly, from that point on the memorial service turned into an occasion where cheering was not only appropriate but natural.<\/p>\n
I think Obama gave the best speech of his career last night.\u00a0 When he asked us to live up to the expectations of our children, I was lifted and inspired.\u00a0 I was humbled.\u00a0 It was a magnificent appeal to our better selves.\u00a0 Even the hardest hearts among us must have softened, just a little.\u00a0 I was proud of Tucson again, proud of ordinary people, proud of our president.<\/p>\n
And now, as they say, it’s up to us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Up and at ’em early this morning.\u00a0 A dog to water, feed, and walk, a bicycle to ride, an old friend from Las Vegas showing up in the early afternoon, a party at another friend’s house this evening.\u00a0 But first, a little blogging. Like everyone else, I watched the televised memorial for the victims of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,2],"tags":[76],"class_list":["post-5187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-personal","tag-gabrielle-giffords"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5187"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5195,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5187\/revisions\/5195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}