We were betrayed on Hope Day One. Following in the inauspicious footsteps of Milli Vanilli and Ashlee Simpson before them, the all-star chamber orchestra serenading Barack Obama Tuesday was caught in the act of instrumental lip-syncing.
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, clarinetist Anthony McGill and pianist Gabriela Montero allegedly performed "Air and Simple Gifts," a version of the traditional Shaker song, "Simple Gifts," composed by John Williams, of "Superman," "Indiana Jones," and "Jaws" fame.
But it turns out the version we heard during the inauguration was actually a recording done two days prior.
"Truly, weather just made it impossible," Carole Florman, a spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said on Thursday. "No one's trying to fool anybody. This isn't a matter of Milli Vanilli," Ms. Florman added, referring to the pop band that was stripped of a 1989 Grammy because the duo did not sing on their album and lip-synched in concerts.
The Inaugural Committee didn't announce the arrangement, but said it passed word to the television pool that a recording might be used.
"It would have been a disaster if we had done it any other way," he said Thursday in a telephone interview. "This occasion's got to be perfect. You can't have any slip-ups."
The performers and inauguration planners alike said the recording was absolutely necessary to honor the "magnitude of the occasion." It would also have been a disaster had the recording malfunctioned, leaving Yo Yo and Co. to do an Ashlee Simpson jig while exiting the inaugural stage, ashamed. As Obama would tell the musicians, transparency is paramount.
"We also knew we couldn't have any technical or instrumental malfunction on that occasion. A broken string was not an option. It was wicked cold," Ma said. ""What we were there for was to really serve the moment."
I believe the magnitude of the moment and the national interest were also invoked to explain China's having a child model lip-sync their national anthem to the recording of a less-cute little girl's voice this summer at the Beijing Olympics.
Of note, the Marine Band performed without a recording, which I choose to attribute to their superior toughness and not the fact that they're all on brass instruments.
This story will strike most people as very unimportant. Most of those people will be the same ones that have gleefully repeated the "fake turkey" myth as a symbol for George W. Bush's betrayal of the nation. I, for one, will melodramatically mark this day as the day I lost faith in the new Obama administration.
