Hi Barack,
You were smart enough to run an inclusive campaign that relied on word of mouth marketing, Youtube, email and volunteers. You raised a Billion Dollars without once having to sell yourself cheap to the highest corporate bidder.
What happened?
The concert at Lincoln Memorial was one of the most anticipated events of your inauguration in its historic significance linking memories of Lincoln and FDR, Seeger and Springsteen, Dr King and Kennedy and so much more.
That moment was not yours to sell ... that belonged to the entire nation. It just boggles my mind that the exclusive right to televise that event could belong to a corporation.
Ok. I can reconcile myself to corporate sponsorship, even ownership of our most cherished memories, but not to DUMB corporate sponsorship!
As corporate buyers go, you could have selected Google/Youtube or some other accessible quasi-competent entity that would have at least ensured that we the people that funded your campaign were allowed to partake in the moments of glory that followed. (No, not all of us schmucks with day jobs could afford to head to DC and party. Even though I have heard on the grapevine that MLK Day is a holiday.)
But no. Your team (or whoever) had to pick HBO. Many of us get broadcast TV or no TV. There are many of us with cable or satellite but no premium channels. There are people that don't subscribe to HBO because of they want to protect their kids from adult programing. What about reaching out to Evangelicals? How come you forgot to do that when it could have benefited me?
You may say -- what about the glorious web? -- are they not streaming it? To tell the truth the webcast sucked. And I've been trying to get reruns on HBO.com. Guess what? HBO has a lame, lame website which streams the program using an antiquated program called Windows Media Player which is like watching a severe asthmatic run a marathon in the smog.
So all I got to see was some poor quality German N24 Channel version of Pete Seeger singing what sounded like "This Land is Deutchland" about walking on the freedom Autobahn. It must have sounded awful there because the sound guy turned off Pete's microphone.
Seriously, we should be ashamed that the official telecast of this event is not owned by the people and made available on demand.
I never had to work so hard to find your face or message when you really needed my cash. I was grateful to have given and glad to have watched all the web-kitch of the campaign on bootleg sites.
But, now I'm just steaming mad. Selling the rights to the event is like selling the Lincoln memorial itself - no one has that much money to own it!
The only lucky piece of incompetence in all this was that Bishop Robinson's fine oratory was somehow left out of HBOs grasp. So I got to see him proudly demand equality in the name of all people.
You know what ... fire the idiot that made this decision and apologize. It is that bad.