DeSnubbed: Robinson Prayer Will Air Tomorrow

from the Atlantic Online
19 Jan 2009 05:33 pm

It's our bad.

Barack Obama's inaugural committee is taking for the blame for a scheduling miscue that left gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson's prayer out of HBO's live broadcast of yesterday's inaugural megaconcert.

Robinson, the first openly gay Anglican church bishop, called Obama's selection of conservative Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation a "slap in the face."

So observers noticed immediately when Robinson's prayer wasn't broadcast by HBO.

Conspiracy theories abound.

An inaugural committee aide calls it a "simple mistake."

"We'd always intended him to be in the televised portion of the program -- but there was an obvious miscommunication between the planners and executers on this one." HBO went live at 2:30 pm ET; Robinson invoked at around 2:25.

Live TV being what it is, it's not a mistake that is easily or quickly fixed.

Tomorrow, before an audience of 2 million people on the Mall, the inaugural committee will broadcast an edited version of the program on Jumboscreens that includes his prayer.

It was, the aide says, "[a]n honest, unfortunate mistake in executing the program that for which we take responsibility."

The team has apologized to Robinson.


Note: The text of the Bishop's prayer is presented in the previous post. I still don't understand the selling of the "concert" to HBO, a cable network that is probably unavailable to the majority of Americans, although I don't have data to back that up! Perhaps I was ticked because I was one of those Americans with no access to HBO. However, I'm happy it will be broadcast to those of us on the Mall. I was moved by the prayer.