When Mitt Romney's video address began, one wicked tweet wondered whether the Republican candidate would promise to make his inauguration speech from Jerusalem.
His mother, Charlotte, who turns 101 Saturday, did not make the inauguration for the first time, but he planned to return home to the Boston area on Saturday to visit her.
"Well, after winning an election, celebrities always like to say, 'I'm going to the inauguration.' " But bragging rights among the Hollywood set can cause complications for the Obama team, which is trying to make this inauguration as "open and accessible" as possible and is painfully aware of its image in tough economic times.
Asked how Mr. Ma could make the inauguration ceremony but not the Super Bowl, Mr. Ewanick laughed and replied that the Ma spot would run instead during the Academy Awards on Feb. 22. Like Hyundai, Cars.com, owned by a consortium of media companies like Gannett and McClatchy, took another look at its Super Bowl playbook after the economy worsened last fall.
The battle for Abidjan finally appears to be going in favour of Alassane Ouattara, the internationally acknowledged winner of the 2010 election in Ivory Coast, but the bloody manner of his victory will make his inauguration as a northerner in the south even more difficult than ever after almost 10 years of hot and cold war.
We've yet to get to the bottom of it, but we do know this: this will make her Inauguration Day photos way more memorable.
Those are the places that made this inauguration story possible.
The story concerned some months-old visa difficulty that nearly prevented Barack Obama's half-brother making his inauguration (but didn't), and might have been expected to be the sort of thing that some government source had kept in their "In Case of Emergency" locker for some time.
It's unclear if any major decisions will be made before Inauguration Day, which is just over two weeks away.
But what happened minutes later made this Inauguration Day really different – Iran freed 52 American hostages it had held for 444 days.
