My favorite fiddle player, Itzhak Perlman, provided one of the high-points of today’s Coronation (other than Aretha Franklin’s hat, which I’m fairly sure I saw atop the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center this year) when he once again produced his magic tone, this time without any feeling in his fingers.

The rest was mostly risible, even for the half-way alert viewer. One of the larger chuckles came when our rookie President spoke of putting away “childish things.” Perhaps he was referring to his voting record.

And on the evidence of the body of his speech, cognitive dissonance will be a major feature of the Obama administration, as it was of his campaign. He had the nerve to raise up “risk takers, doers, and makers of things,” this after a career in Washington and Illinois of voting for legislation that put obstacle after obstacle in the path of risk-takers, doers and makers of things.