‘Grim and beautiful,’ Biden’s inauguration a day of jarring juxtapositions [Los Angeles Times]
On television, at least at certain moments, it may have looked like it always has the hand on an old Bible, the Marine Band’s brassy rendition of “Hail to the Chief,” the audience of dignitaries.
But when Joseph R. Biden descended the steps onto the inauguration platform bedecked with red, white and blue bunting, he passed through a brass door with a large crack in its glass panel, lingering evidence of the deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol building two weeks earlier.
Across Washington on Wednesday, there were reminders that America’s transfer of power, this time, had not been peaceful. As much as Biden’s inauguration, and his address calling for unity at a fraught moment of crisis and division, marked a return to a more traditional brand of politics, the day’s pageantry and rhetorical optimism played out against a grim, unavoidable reality a raging pandemic, economi