The Bloom Is Off The Rose

Did they think they could hide it forever? What were they thinking? In this era of instant communication and shrinking privacy how could you keep such a huge secret? Here we are, just about a month into the New Year and just barely a week into the presidency of Barrack Obama and scandal is in the air. Seems even the darling of the American political system is not immune to the smell of something fishy.

What is the scandal? Is it Afghanistan? The detention centre at Guantanamo Bay? Some kind of CIA torture scandal? Monetary impropriety on the part of a high ranking party member? All of these things? We've seen just about everything in the last 200 years of the great experiment in democracy, from infidelity in the White House to arms deals gone wrong. It seems, that even with the best of intentions, humans really are fallible. We make mistakes. No doubt about it. Most of the time the mistakes are small and no one sees them. Other times the mistakes are bigger and still no one sees them, but we learn and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Then there are those mistakes which find their way into the harsh light of public criticism and we can no longer hide them. Someone once said, that the only way for a secret between two people to remain a secret, is for one of the people to be dead. Well, here we are again—scandal in the White House.

I can almost hear you screaming—"WHAT WAS THE MISTAKE?" Well, patience young grasshopper. The answer is coming. The big mistake that the Obama presidency has made is maybe the most shocking to hit the news in almost a month. The secret that has finally leaked after one whole week-- the music played by the quartet at Barrack Obama's inauguration was taped! Can you imagine? What could they have been thinking! It seems that the cold temperatures on Inauguration Day caused the instruments to go out of tune. So naturally the musicians did not want to sound like a bag of drowning cats and recorded the music ahead of time. Great! Did I notice? No. Do I care if they played live or not? Nope. Did it take away from the occasion? Not at all. Could I have lived without knowing this information? Absolutely.

We live in a world where people die each day as a result of lunatic dictators and war, starvation and natural disasters. Where real governmental mismanagement costs taxpayers millions of dollars a day. Where real news is literally just a click of a button away. The fact that news outlets decide to spend time, money and effort tracking down a story with as much news value as the sun coming up in the morning, is astounding. Here's a news flash—the bloom really is off the rose, just not the one you might think.