Faked But Accurate: Inaugural's Pre-Oath Quartet Synched Their Taped Performance

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The New York Times reports that the music played just before Barack Obama took the presidential oath of office was not live (the photo at right is at the Times story via the Associated Press). 

At least one reporter who might be expected to know better wrote a review of the performance that would lead readers to believe that she thought it was live.

Here are the first few paragraphs from Daniel Wakin's quite forgiving report at the Times (HT to Althouse via Instapundit; bolds are mine):

The Frigid Fingers Were Live, but the Music Wasn’t

It was not precisely lip-synching, but pretty close.

The somber, elegiac tones before President Obama’s oath of office at the inauguration on Tuesday came from the instruments of Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and two colleagues. But what the millions on the Mall and watching on television heard was in fact a recording, made two days earlier by the quartet and matched tone for tone by the musicians playing along.

..... "Truly, weather just made it impossible," Carole Florman, a spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said on Thursday. "No one’s trying to fool anybody. This isn’t a matter of Milli Vanilli," Ms. Florman added, referring to the pop band that was stripped of a 1989 Grammy because the duo did not sing on their album and lip-synched in concerts.

Ms. Florman said that the use of a recording was not disclosed beforehand but that the NBC producers handling the television pool were told of its likelihood the day before.

Somebody's a little touchy, aren't they?

Maybe Ms. Florman and her committee "weren't trying to fool anybody," but somebody, namely Anya Grundmann at NPR (bio here), appears to have been quite taken in by it all. Here is her review of the "performance," including the sappiest paean to the wonders of diversity you may ever see:

It sure looks like Ms. Grundmann is telling us that the instruments played on stage by the esteemed musicians were the ones that "held the melody and then layered it," and then "twist(ed) and curl(ed)" it.

Who knew that piped-in music had such power?

Exit question for Carol Florman: How many of those in attendance, and how many of the 37.8 million TV viewers (about 9% fewer than the 41.8 million who watched Ronald Reagan's inauguration, and over 30% lower on a percentage-of-population basis), believed the quartet's performance was live?

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.