The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Inauguration from the Red States

While you in D.C. worry about what the temporary influx of celebrities into your city, the rest of us can only look on with envy. Stuck in Dallas, I might as well be in Siberia as far as the inauguration is concerned. Actually, it's the bizarro inauguration here. While the rest of the world will be getting rid of George W. Bush as of tomorrow, he is coming to Dallas to stay. Permanently. His new home is just a few miles from my apartment, SMU (where the Bush Library will also reside), and the President George Bush Turnpike. Here, there's no escaping the guy. (Can't we vote him off the island?) It was thus heartening this weekend to happen into a Bed, Bath, and Beyond and discover an unexpectedly huge display, right as you walked in, of Obama inaugural memorabilia. For a second, I thought I'd fallen into a worm hole and popped up, along with Hanna and Beyoncé, at Tyson's Corner. One expects to find such displays on the mall in D.C., but at a strip mall in historically right-wing Dallas? The only thing I could liken it to was the nationwide outpouring of kitsch that greeted Lady Di and Charles' wedding. (I was in England that summer and still have a campy Charles and Diana ashtray from that trip.) Indeed, such trinkets may inadvertently turn out to be the first installment of Obama's stimulus package. As Tina Brown noted in The Diana Chronicles: "In the 184 days between the February engagement and the July wedding, $800 million of royal wedding souvenirs overflowed in the red, white and blue windows of British stores." Obama, of course, is a democratically elected royal and hasn't had as much time to work with. But in my current mood of patriotic fervor, it was admittedly all I could do to resist the symbolism of buying—in Dallas, no less—a plate with Obama's image and the words "Change Has Come!"