Is it a bird?...

Charlie Brooker: Obama's inauguration was the most inspiring thing we've seen in years - and the most terrifying, too

For the last eight years, watching America at work was like watching the scenes in Superman III where Superman, under the influence of red kryptonite, goes "bad" and grows stubble and gets drunk and starts vandalising the city and shouting at kids. He's only stopped when his geeky alter ego Clark Kent magically fights his way out from within, and stands blinking before him, in his nerdy suit and thick glasses. Evil Superman scowls, and the pair have a cathartic bust-up in a junkyard - at the end of which Evil Superman is finally vanquished. As a battered but unbowed Clark Kent gazes up at the heavens, the theme music swells, and he pulls his shirt open to reveal - ta da! - a fresh, clean Superman costume he'd been wearing underneath the whole time. Then he flies off and beats up Robert Vaughn or something, which is a shame because until then it had all been a pretty good metaphor for the redemptive spectacle of last November's election. And now it's just a silly action movie I probably shouldn't have mentioned in the first place.