Too short to be an oratorio, Barack Obama's inaugural speech (video) proved nevertheless that as an orator he's got handle.

That guy can speak. Notwithstanding our gratitude to George W. Bush for the past eight years of malaprops, listening to the new president yesterday was like going to the dentist for a deep cleaning followed by a thorough rinse.

Can barely even taste George now, can you?

Yes, the nation will have to endure several root canals, but for now, the public seems numb with delight about having a president who can speak our language and sounds like a grownup.

Considering that Obama will have to deliver more bad news to Americans than any other president in memory, we're fortunate that he's such a skilled and inspiring speaker.

It was already gratifying that we'll have a president who loves to play basketball. (As a former ballboy for the Phillips 66ers, I feel a special tug in the new president's direction.) But it's clear that no matter how much Obama likes to dribble, as a speaker he never drools.

One of the better analyses — up to a point — of Obama's inaugural address was Thomas DeFrank's piece in the Daily News:

Yes, Obama's speech was so stirring and well-delivered that it made even the most hardened cynics' knees buckle.

And DeFrank's analysis is smoothly written. But let's not get carried away about what DeFrank says about our having to "grow up."

We will not grow up — and by "we" I mean politicians and their "same old partisan, gridlocked, dog-eat-dog baloney." That will always be around, and every incoming president has to give us the same encouragement to pull together and forget the partisanship.

Yes, Obama had to say that, but partisanship is what democracies are made of, and other parts of Obama's speech were more memorable — like when he said:

You heard him. He actually included "non-believers" in there. What a refreshing change from the Bush regime, which tried to ram its evangelical nonsense down our throats.

Obama gave the obligatory shout-out to God, and I'm sure She's happy about that, but he actually directed a conciliatory phrase right at the Muslim world. Astonishing.

The new president, you might notice, pointedly did not portray the planet as the battleground of a comic-book-style "clash of civilizations." Instead, he actually tried to promote the idea that no matter what, we're all human.

Leave aside the lingering doubts that Dick Cheney is one of us. You have to hope that those words of Obama's will get under our skin and stay there.

Now, Obama, get to work on that New Great Depression.

And you out there: Start clicking on these items...unless you have to get back to work...if you still have a job...

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

N.Y. Daily News: 'BAM'S MESSAGE: TOUGH LOVE FOR TOUGH TIMES'

Wall Street Journal: 'President Obama Urges Unity Amid "Raging Storms" of War and Recession'

N.Y. Times: 'Rejecting Bush Era, Reclaiming Values'

N.Y. Post: 'DAY OF DESTINY FOR ALL AMERICA'

N.Y. Post: 'Fatal Kitty Toss'

N.Y. Times: 'Hope Mixes with Doubt as World Reacts'

Crain's New York Business: 'Queens housing market hit hard'

Wall Street Journal: 'Bush: '"We Led With Conviction"'

Crain's New York Business: 'Market tumbles 330 points on bank jitters'

FOX: 'Obama Administration Moves to Halt Guantanamo Trials'

N.Y. Post: 'CITY TAKES BRUISIN' OVER SLIPPERY BRIDGE BIKE LANES'

Crain's New York Business: 'Report: Thousands of BofA layoffs coming this week'

N.Y. Times: 'Top Newsday Editors Return to Work After Dispute'

Crain's New York Business: 'Is Cablevision meddling in Newsday's coverage?'

Newsday: 'Knicks center Eddy Curry slapped with sex suit'

Newsday: 'Lawsuit filed against Eddy Curry (Warning: Explicit language)'

N.Y. Post: 'NEWSDAY EDITORS "MISSING"' (Keith Kelly)

N.Y. Times: 'Trials for Parents Who Chose Faith Over Medicine'

Wall Street Journal: 'Tax Issue Won't Derail Geithner: Senators Are More Concerned With How Treasury Nominee Will Help Fix Economy'

N.Y. Times: 'In Albany, Higher Taxes for the Rich Expected'

Wall Street Journal: 'Kennedy Has Seizure at Inaugural'

Wall Street Journal: 'Senate Confirms Raft of Cabinet Picks'

Wall Street Journal: 'Chrysler-Fiat Deal Needs U.S. Loans'

'Prosecutors Focus on Madoff's Point Man'

From the Wall Street Journal:

Crain's New York Business: 'Madoff victims likely to get little money back'

And you thought that Hillary Clinton was the political season's upset loser and that the upset winner, Barack Obama, promised "change."

You were wrong. Reneging on his promise of change, Obama may turn out to be the only fresh face in his administration. He is expected to bail out Clinton by naming her today as his Secretary of State.

It wasn't that many years ago that Clinton was appointed chief diplomat of Wal-Mart, thanks only to her possessing the celebrity of being a governor's wife.

During the chain's march toward becoming the world's largest corporation, she carried the message of low, low prices to small towns throughout America's heartland. Not to mention — she didn't — that she was a Democratic governor's wife representing the world's largest union-buster. (See my May 2000 story, "Wal-Mart's First Lady.")

Now, unless all the signs are wrong, she'll be the chief diplomat of a country with low, low esteem. Maybe it isn't so bad to have a celebrity in the post to try to restore our international rep, but as some outlets point out, Clinton and the other expected foreign-policy appointments are all more hawkish than Obama.

And many of them are much more experienced and/or skillful at actual diplomacy and/or negotiation. Maybe no diplomat will be able to step into the Mumbai rubble and tiptoe through the still dangerous minefield that is India and Pakistan. Clinton doesn't have the chops to strike deals, as her record on health care and other issues prove. She was good at such "constituent services" as making sure that potholes are fixed. Big deal.

She doesn't have much of a track record of skillful negotiating from her years as First Lady and senator. One can only hope that Clinton surrounds herself with some real diplomats and just focuses on being the chief U.S. spokesmodel.

There's little doubt that we are now officially a celebrity culture. Gone are the days when colorless types like Warren Christopher can move into Foggy Bottom or when little-known wonks like Condoleezza Rice can use the job to attain celebrity. Now it's celebrity first, then the job.

Not that I'm telling you anything new, but if you still don't think we're a celebrity culture, ask the New Yorkers who started lining up yesterday to watch gun-crazy football player Plaxico Burress's perp walk, also scheduled for today. (It is a pretty interesting tale.)

Clinton is perhaps the first celebrity to get the State post, which is usually a stepping stone to the presidency, not a reward for losing. (See the list.)

Now she'll be third in the line of succession to the presidency, behind Joe Biden and the Senate president pro tem Robert Byrd, who at 91 is so decrepit that he has to be wheeled around the Capitol. [Correction: Actually, Hillary would be fourth, behind Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and then Byrd. The order of succession is vice president, then House speaker, then Senate president pro tem, then secretary of State. Thanks to reader "Bob" for pointing this out.]

Good thing the Democrats have control of the Senate. Otherwise, convicted felon pro pen Ted Stevens would still be president pro tem.

As for Hillary's new job, don't blame me. I tried to stop her with this and that.

Moving on to the this and that of the here and now ...

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Wall Street Journal: 'India Security Faulted as Survivors Tell of Terror'

Washington Post: 'Obama Poised to Name Hillary Clinton to State Post'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Hillary Clinton passed on Appropriations chair to become Obama's Secretary of State'

Jewish Daily Forward: 'Captured Terrorist: Mumbai Attackers Had Orders To Kill Israelis'

The Age (Australia): 'Experts not certain al-Qaeda to blame'

BBC: 'How Mumbai attacks unfolded'

McClatchy: 'With economy souring, illegal immigrants going home'

BBC: 'Pakistanis wary of Mumbai claims'

N.Y. Times: 'One Man's Military-Industrial-Media Complex'

N.Y. Times: 'A Handpicked Obama Team for a Shift in Foreign Policy'

Salon: 'Sympathy for Charles Graner'

Jewish Daily Forward: 'Chabad Grieves for Emissaries Killed in Mumbai'

Even in the most charitable light, Hillary's diplomatic skills are dim and dimmer. Never in her career has she built a consensus with her own hands or successfully worked out a major deal. She's even left a host of former allies — like children's advocate Marion Wright Edelman — disaffected and angry with her after they realized that she stood for nothing but herself.

Not that there's anything wrong with a politician doing that. Except when you consider that politician as a diplomat.

Not every pol can be an international diplomat. George W. Bush himself is the prime example. And though some political operatives can do it, Bush's handlers proved what a disaster that could be when they sent hardline polemicist John Bolton to the U.N. — one of the most ludicrous appointments in the history of U.S. diplomacy, because Bolton was an avowed foe of the very existence of the U.N.

Hillary is no polemicist. But she's no diplomat.

She isn't even a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Chuck Hegel is. So is Dick Lugar. Either of those serious, sober, centrist Republicans would be better choices for Obama, who himself was on the committee (as was Joe Biden).

The buzz about Obama's possible selection of Hillary smacks of little more than backdoor campaigning by her own people.

We're sorry that she's bored with her job as New York's junior senator. And we know that she'll be mortified at having to continue being the state's junior senator, because Chuck Schumer, the other N.Y. senator, is now one of the most powerful Democrats in D.C. — Chuck is chairman of the Joint Economic Committee and also controls the campaign treasure chest for fellow Democrats. Schumer won't be relinquishing his power for at least the next four years, unless the GOP seizes control of the Senate in 2010.

Give it up, Hillary. Go back to the Senate and do some work. You're a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Do us a favor. Try to beat some of our swords into ploughshares.

Or if you just want to sulk, at least browse these items . . .

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Wall Street Journal: 'Citi to Cut More Jobs, Raise Rates on Its Plastic'
"Citigroup is embarking on another huge round of layoffs and is raising interest rates on millions of credit-card customers."

AllAfrica.com: 'Kenya: What the Global Left Can Learn From Obama's Victory'

Washington Post: 'Free the GOP: The Party Won't Win Back the Middle as Long As It's Hostage to Social Fundamentalists'

Jewish Daily Forward: 'After Jail, Agriprocessors Workers Face a Difficult Journey: Left With No Support, Unable To Go Home, They Talk for the First Time About Ordeal'

Washington Post: 'FDIC Details Plan To Alter Mortgages: Treasury Opposes Using Bailout Funds For Proposal to Ease Monthly Payments'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Jennifer Aniston finally talks about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt'

N.Y. Times: 'Chances Dwindle on Bailout Plan for Automakers'

Philadelphia Daily News: 'What's so funny about Obama? Comedians and musicians struggle to find material'

Reuters: 'Fewer jokes in Obama White House? Comedians wonder'

Onion: 'International Con Man Barack Obama Leaves U.S. With $85 Million In Campaign Fundraising'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Man swinging chair shot and killed by police officer in Coney Island'

N.Y. Post: 'B'KLYN OFFICER SLAYS LUNATIC'

Washington Post: 'Confessed Police Killer Lionized by Thousands in China: Crime Seen as Blow Against Oppression'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Mr. Bush, come tell the ghosts in Queens your financial plan'

Washington Post: 'In a First, Astronomers Report Viewing Planets of Other Suns'

New Yorker: 'The Joshua Generation: Race and the campaign of Barack Obama' (David Remnick)

Washington Post: 'CIA Director: Iraq Not Main Front in War on Terror'

Wall Street Journal: 'Treasury Draws Fire for Shift in Rescue'
"Lawmakers assailed Paulson over his handling of shifting TARP's focus, and raised questions about Treasury's plans for rescue funds."

Salon: 'Merkel surprised at warnings against regulation'

Onion: 'Majority Of Americans Never Use Physical Education After High School'

Wall Street Journal: 'MGM Mirage CEO to Resign Amid Questions About MBA'

Washington Post: 'Transition Team Chock Full of Bundlers: Public Interest Advocates Fret About the Appearance'

Jewish Daily Forward: 'Black, Jewish Vote for Obama May Signal a Renewed Tie: But the Historic Allies Still Disagree on Many Issues'

Salon: 'Awaiting Obama's top lieutenants'
"Will it be Chuck Hagel, or even Hillary Clinton, for secretary of state? Will Bob Gates stay at the Pentagon? Obama's national security team remains mostly top secret."

Politico: 'Obama gets the Clinton band back together'

New Yorker: 'Emanuel In Full'

But more importantly in this country, the Obama victory was a victory for white people.

Outlets ranging from ESPN to the BBC automatically scurried to black people for their reaction to Obama's win. It would be more telling if they focused on the reaction from white people, because that was the real story.

It looks as if Obama did better with white voters than Bill Clinton did. Remember Toni Morrison's "trope of blackness" foolishness in 1998 when she called Clinton "our first black president"?

Claptrap. Not backed up by the facts — like Clinton's embrace of such separate-but-unequal policies as the Glass-Steagall repeal, which heaped more misery on poor blacks and poor whites by worsening the subprime scam.

Ten years later, we really do have a black president, and reporters are besieging black people in Kenya and the NBA for quotes about Obama's victory. What do you think they'll say? Of course they like it.

The fact, though, is that an astounding number of white people not only voted for Obama but actively supported him and cried tears of joy when he won — a landmark in America's racial history and a severe blow against tokenism.

The images from Grant Park of Obama and Joe Biden and their families — white people and black people, young and old — holding hands and hugging were unforgettable. Unforgettable because for the first time on the highest national stage the black man and his kin weren't relegated to supporting roles.

Recall Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 speech, when he and other black people were on the outside of the White House looking in, and he talked about transforming "the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood":

He tried to convince us that civil rights is as much of — or more of — a white issue as a black one.

The current phase of black people mostly relegated in white eyes (and their own) to dreams of success as sports gladiators, actors, and rappers may be ending. Tokens? No longer.

The only tokens you see in New York City subways these days are the faces on the ads plastered in each car. Look at the ads that feature the casts of the season's new TV shows: Each cast is either all black or it consists of four or five whites and a token black and maybe a token person of Asian descent.

Marketers still blitz us with those apartheid-like images. Our pop culture's portrayals of mixed-race couples are mostly white men with black women — The Wire's naked coupling of Lance Reddick's black-cop character atop his white lawyer girlfriend the exception that proves the unwritten rule among marketers to not offend whites.

And now we have a mixed-race president. In his grave, Theodore Bilbo must be growling about "mongrelization."

Segregation and segregationists are cancer cells, and Obama's victory will help flush that infection out of the American mainstream.

Think about another landmark event in America's racial history. The color barrier that Jackie Robinson ran through in 1947 was not a black barrier; it was a white one. And popular Dodger shortstop and team captain Pee Wee Reese's white arm publicly draped over his black teammate's shoulders was arguably more significant than the expected joy felt by other black people at Robinson's feat.

Racism was once commonly called "the Negro problem." In this white-ruled country, it's always been a white problem.

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Wall Street Journal: 'Obama Turns to Building Leadership Team'

Village Voice: 'Wall Streetwalkers: the Sleazy Lehman Brothers Subsidiary'

Bloomberg: 'ISM Services Index in U.S. Slumped to Record Low'

Election Law (Ohio State University): 'Post-election contests: Four states to watch'

Election Reform Project (Brookings): 'New Jersey's DRE Problem'

Fox News: 'Karl Rove on the Ins and Outs of the Transition from Bush to Obama'

L.A. Times: 'Gay rights backers file 3 lawsuits challenging Prop. 8'

N.Y. Daily News: 'City paid $50G to settle excessive-force suits against same officer in subway sodomy case'

VOA: 'Taiwan President Meets With Senior Mainland Official'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Time's short for GOP to lick wounds'

Guardian (U.K.): 'Barack Obama election victory drives US newspaper sales surge'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Ed Dept. plans 50% slash in new seats for students'

Sin Chew (Malaysia): 'Inheriting The Bush Legacy Of Mess'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Palin goes out with a whimper'
"Vanquished VP nominee Sarah Palin wanted to address the nation on Election Night, but a top Mac aide nixed her request."

Washington Post: 'First-Ever Mapping of Cancer Patient's Genome'

N.Y. Post: 'SEX FIEND STARING AT 165 YRS. IN STIR'

Washington Post: 'In a Heated Race, Obama's Cool Won the Day'

N.Y. Post: 'Bamelot: Plenty Kennedys on Cabinet List'

Running down the press:

You'll be deluged all day with stories about Ground Zero, where Barack Obama and John McCain will duke it out in the tragic death cage.

As the BBC notes with a straight face:

Yes, no politicking going on there.

Google News: 'Lipstick politics: The big diversion'

In a hopeful sign for fans of artificial intelligence, the algorithms show a glimmer of irony this morning.

At one point, the above headline (from the Chicago Tribune's Swamp blog in D.C.) zoomed to the top of the page, the lede item of 2,233 lipstick/pig/Palin/Obama related items.

The irony? News orgs and everyone else hunger so much for a spot on the Google News page that they will think this story continues to be important and thus will stay diverted.

Meanwhile, on the seventh anniversary of 9/11, the Bush regime is now diverting troops from Iraq to Afghanistan — troops it never should have diverted in 2003 from Afghanistan to Iraq.

As for the Tribune story itself? Mark Silva's item is lame:

Me and everyone else used that pun yesterday.

CBS: 'Poll: Most Say U.S. Prepared For Attacks'

The rest of this meaningless poll (which gets weight because news orgs give it weight) notes, in part:

I guess this means that there won't be a sudden push to abolish term limits (like the trend the Times spotted) for presidents. Talk about worries lessening: Bush is unlikely to ever again win the presidency.

McClatchy: '9/11 seven years later: U.S. 'safe,' South Asia in turmoil'

In one of the better 9/11 stories this morning, Jonathan S. Landay and Saeed Shah remind us that there's a big ol' planet outside the U.S. borders:

Taking their cue from Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen's assessment yesterday — "I am not convinced we are winning it in Afghanistan" — they run with it:

Daily News: 'Remember towering spirit in 9/11 aftermath'

Tendentious and predictable, courtesy of super-self-serious columnist Michael Daly:

Emma Lazarus he ain't.

New York Review of Books: 'The Battle for a Country's Soul'

Forget about today's coverage. On this 9/11, the best reflection — one with real meat — remains Jane Mayer's think piece in the NYRB's previous issue:

One more passage from Mayer's look back, which is every bit as patriotic and stirring as the feeble attempts by Daly and others — and without the schmaltz and jingoism:

Times: 'Pressure Builds as Lehman Faces Mounting Losses'

As it usually does, the paper of record takes the angle of the pressure on the suffering bank instead of the broader, more logical angle of the pressure of the bank's looming collapse on the rest of the world's economy. The Times lede:

You have to go overseas to get to the real news: what impact this collapse is having on the rest of the planet outside Lehman's Seventh Avenue HQ. Try this one from the Financial Times in London: "Lehman survival strategy fails to lift markets."

Daily News: 'Biden blunder: Joe says maybe Hillary Clinton would make better VP'

Joe Biden is already giving us an example of how he just can't keep his big yap shut — even when he's responding to praise.

No one wants a veep who's not confident in himself or herself, but Biden just couldn't let a compliment pass.

OK, OK, we get the point: You're trying to pander to women to counter the presence of a woman on the GOP ticket.

Shut the fuck up already with the "I'm not worthy" bit. How will you try to show, in this popularity contest, that Sarah Palin's not worthy if you say that about yourself? Suitors — successful ones — don't act that way.

And notice that Biden even said it "testily" instead of graciously. The guy is more competent than he sounds, but you wouldn't know it. Trouble is brewing for the Demo ticket, because it's sound, not substance, that bites.

Post: 'QNS. POL CAUGHT IN STING: FBI NABS "$500,000 GRAFT" ASSEMBLYMAN'

Good one from Fred Dicker and his colleagues:

An FBI agent going undercover on the Capitol floor. Send that man to Congress!