The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Stephen Metcalf, and this is the Slate Culture Gap Fest, Race for Impact Edition.

This is also the daily podcast from Slate.com for Wednesday, January 28, 2009.

On today's program, we're going to talk about the Obama inauguration,

the end of white America. Those are two separate topics, by the way, and what do women want?

Additionally, we'll be discussing the death of American literary giant John Updike.

And as some of you may know, our sponsor now is audible.com and our URL with them is audiblepodcast.com slash culture fest.

Joining me today are Slate's deputy editor, Julia Turner.

Hello, Julia.

Hi, Julia.

And our film critic, Dana Stevens.

Hey, Dana.

Hello, Stephen.

Well, let's jump right in.

Brace for Impact was what the now widely lionized captain of the U.S. Air

plane that was descending into the Hudson River. Brace for Impact is what he told the

people in the cabin to do right before he definitely brought the plane in completely safely.

He's a hero for our time. Dana isn't in some way the outpouring of emotion in the direction of this captain

a kind of displaced set of emotions that aren't yet contained in our feelings for Barack Obama.

In some sense, we're all bracing for the impact of the double bird strike of the economy.

We're all looking for Obama to be a captain of the ship of state in the way that the outgoing buffoon wasn't. And this is in some sense why the inauguration was greeted with an immense outpouring of emotion, not just the historic fact of the first African American president, but something more as well, an anxiety that we're hoping will be allayed by super competence. Right. Yeah, that's a great reading of the landing of that plane. I hadn't thought of that, but it was just days before the inauguration that it happened, right?

Yeah, it was.

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