Nation lead by Actors and Pop Singers

I just turned on the TV to a spectacle of pre-innaguration festivities. Tom Hanks was speaking to the throngs at the Lincoln memorial. Even now, jaded by all that has come to be, I was taken aback. So, on the eve of supposedly historical innaguration the nation is being spoken to, lead, shown the way by..... actors? Whatever happened to philosophers, scientists, visionaries, leader ? Do we have any left? Is the best we can do is to trot out people whose achievements are mostly defined by a careeer of  playing REAL heroes and leaders and visionaries? Am I the only one who finds this delciiously absurd?

So they spend $150 million of REAL people's money to stage a made-for-TV variety show studded by the likes of Tom Hanks, Queen Latiffa, and Jon Bon Jovi? Are you kidding me? Have we all lost our collective common sense? Will we not look back at this 3 ring cricus years from now with a sense of embarssement and wonderment: Just what the hell were we all thinking?