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WATCH: Three Lighter Moments From Inauguration Day

President Barack Obama kisses first lady Michelle Obama as their daughters Sasha, left, and Malia, second from left, look on during the Inaugural parade.
Gerald Herbert
/
AP
President Barack Obama kisses first lady Michelle Obama as their daughters Sasha, left, and Malia, second from left, look on during the Inaugural parade.

We've covered the serious, so we thought we'd bring you three lighter moments from this historic day.

First, we'll point to Al Roker, the NBC weather man who was stationed close to the White House during the parade. He told his colleagues that he would try to get Vice President Biden to shake his hand. After quite a bit of screaming from Roker, an energetic Biden disobeyed his Secret Service detail and ran over to shake his hand. In the words of Buzzfeed, when that happened "Roker freaked out." Here's video:

Brian Stelter, who covers media for the New York Times, called it the "TV moment of the afternoon."

Second, we'll point to perhaps the sweetest moment of the evening. The whole Obama family was in the review stand and Sasha and Malia started taking some photographs with their phones. They wanted one of their parents kissing, except it took a few tries. Now This News has the video:

Third, we'll point you to Gawker, which dissects a look first lady Michelle Obama gave Republican Speaker John Boehner during the luncheon. Gawker describes it as a "hall-of-fame shade-throwing moment."

Here's the video, courtesy of "mattyrab" on Tumblr who first noticed the look:

As Eric Pfeiffer of Yahoo! News reports, we don't know what's being said between Obama and Boehner, so we really can't make judgements.

But Pfeiffer wonders: "What do you think? Are political audiences overreacting to Michelle Obama's facial expression? Or was it a candid moment captured on film showing that even during the most benign of political events, personality conflicts and personal feelings rise to the surface?"

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.