Walk it like you talk it, Left-Wingers!

After most recent elections, there’s been a lot of talk about incoming administrations “looking like America.” Even W did his part, bringing qualified African-Americans to some of the highest cabinet posts in the land. Colin Powell, Condi Rice, I’m sure there are others.

And now that Obama is trying to strike a cultural balance with his inauguration, the Left is losing its shit. Specifically in the choice of best-selling mega-preacher Rick Warren as inauguration invocator, because he doesn’t share the Left’s support of abortion rights and gay marriage.

The fact that a lot of America looks like rednecks, Republicans and evangelicals seems to make Warren a pretty good choice to me. Inclusion doesn’t just mean including people who agree with us, it necessarily encompasses including people with whom we are not in lock-step ideologically. It’s a knife that cuts both ways or not at all.

Anyhow, where does the Left think they’re going to find a pastor to give the invocation who does support abortion rights and gay marriage? The Catholics? No. The Baptists? Uh uh. The First AMEs? You’re kidding, right? Last I heard, Gavin Newsome doesn’t have a degree in Divinity... No, they’d have to settle for some wingnut Unitarian who nobody’s ever heard of or maybe the leader of some Protestant splinter group. And you know who that would unite?

Nobody.

Goddammit, if there’s going to be a drawing-together in this country, both sides are gonna have to give a little. That’s what they call a compromise, and as much as rebellion against taxation without representation, it’s what we have to thank for the existence of this country. If the founding fathers had been as intractable as the people howling indignation at Warren’s selection, we might still be kissing the Queen’s ass and speaking the King’s English.

So get off your soapboxes and look at the big picture. Warren’s on the good side of issues such as reduction of global poverty, human rights abuses and the AIDS epidemic. He’s an intelligent, articulate guy who doesn’t seem to be spreading a message of hatred from the pulpit for people who disagree with him. In these ugly, polarizing times, he’s about the best we’re going to do.

For crying out loud, we’re getting a duet between Yo Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman; even some highbrow poetry reading (a tradition done away with by culture-loving POTUS Bush in 2004 to the great irritation of The Missus as well as other members of the intelligentsia). If we have to listen to some member of the clergy drone on about God this and Providence that at the inauguration – and tradition clearly suggests we do – I think Rick Warren is one the canniest, most middle-of-the-road picks Obama could have made.

If we left-wingers are serious about healing the wounds inflicted on this country during the Bush administration and legitimately trying to unite our fractured union – and not just extracting cultural revenge for the last eight years of fundamentalist idiocy – we’ve got to give a little bit to get an awful lot back.

So let’s give them Rick Warren and be happy it isn’t Pat Robertson or Rev. Fred Phelps. To paraphrase a young Eddie Murphy: Have a double-caffeine mocha latte and a smile and shut the fuck up.