An historic and unprecedented 'hush' descended throughout the world last Tuesday morning as nearly 7 billion people watched while then-president-elect Barack Obama was sworn in several times as the 44th President of the United States of America.
White and other non-black persons watching the historic inauguration of the nation's first African-American president on their televisions, satellites, HD broadcasts and on streaming video receivers on their laptops and PDAs were stunned to discover that among the jam-packed crowd present were enormous numbers of what can only be described as 'black people'.
Steve Smith, yuppie bystander, recalls," Yeah, no kidding there were black people.
"I'm just standing there with my coffee latte, minding my own business in the crush of millions at the Washington D.C. Mall, when it hits me - a lot of these people are black!
"I felt surrounded. Where in the hell did they all come from? I never noticed black people around me before.
"Well, there is that one guy, whatsisname, from work but he wears Dockers and keeps pretty much to himself, so he's not really all that noticeable."
While no official count was taken of the number of people attending the historic inauguration ceremony of the nation's first African-American president, the National Park Service has been issuing ever more defensive estimates all week.
Current unofficial count stands at 1.8 billion persons packed into the Mall, possibly half of whom were black, according to National Park Service public relations scapegoat Mr. Neville Nebbish.
When told that the current estimate of persons present on the Mall was more in the billions rather than millions, our bystander Smith had this to say:
"Wow, really? Billions of 'possibly black people'?
"No wonder I had to keep fiddling with the color and tint settings on my TiVo. Just think, all those black people, right here in America," Mr. Smith said, shaking his head.
"Who knew?"
