Frothy Scotsman swears

Today is one of those days when I offer heartfelt prayers of thanksgiving that I do not have a television in my house. Even so, the news of Obama's inauguration is seeping through the cracks in my firewall. The Guardian's PDA digital content blog has perhaps the most superfluous sounding article of the day entitled "Obama inauguration: where to find coverage online". I am even getting one or two emails from Government offices over here with the latest silly items that are circulating (see below). So I thought I should join in the hysterical euphoria balanced appraisal.

The BBC's coverage is obviously going to be modelled on its coverage of World Youth Day - though in this case they will show pictures of cheering crowds of young people, drop the snide slant, and focus on the positive. In fact, they look as though they will cover all bases, including the news that Obama is in fact Scottish.

To follow the action more closely, you could always try Al Jazeera's Obama Twitter channel (not actually a joke). However, I think that we should become the BBC for a day. Let's pretend that Barack Obama is indeed the Pope and that we want to give a serious and objective account of this world-changing event.

To set the viewer at ease, we could begin with a "Well fancy that!" clip so that nobody takes it too seriously. Here's a good one from the Krispy Kreme doughnut chain:



Putting on a more sombre tone, we can hint that some trouble is expected from the crowds, necessitating a paramilitary FBI squad to be stationed at the base of the Washington Monument

and for volunteers to boost security:

We should at this point drop one or two comments suggesting that the crowds are not building up in the predicted volume and that the security response seemed to be overkill:

Another picture to give emphasis to the slant:

That's enough flickr pictures and silly BBC-bias imitation [Ed]

Meantime, this chap, photographer Ilham Anas, has become quite a celebrity in Indonesia:

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