This is a Friday palate cleanser to end all Friday palate cleansers. A deleted scene from The Office about Barack Obama's inauguration. In light of the horrendous rumors that NBC is going to reboot The Office, it's a reminder of what almost was.

Obama was inaugurated in 2009, so that makes this season five. Jim is engaged to Pam. Dwight is smashing Angela behind Andy's back. The only thing missing is Idris Alba. Having "Charles Miner" in the conference room as Michael Scott, because Obama is now president, declares racism to be dead would have been phenomenal.

"Now that an African-American is in office..."

In 2009, we called Black-Americans (with a capital B) African-Americans. It was what white liberals preferred.

"...you guys are the man. You guys are whitey. And suddenly, you're the ones who can't jump. Or dance. Or do math. Do you understand the responsibility that puts on your shoulders?"

As we know now, things did not work out the way Michael thought they were going to for him. Though, later on, he did learn a valuable lesson about race, his fragility, and equity.

I am purposely not doing any research about this clip, where it came from, or why it never made air. If I were to guess, it was a bell and/or whistle on the season five DVD box set. To you zoomers out there, "DVD box sets" were what we oldheads had to buy to watch entire seasons of TV shows instead of streaming them on Netflix. Also, DVDs were little plastic discs we would shoot with lasers that would project images and words on the screen.

It could have been a deleted scene. It could have been an outtake. Steve Carell walked into a room full of actors to see how far he could take it before one of them broke. My guess is that the full clip ended with Carell dropping a soft-g and Jenna Fischer being the first to break character and snort through her nose.

I needed a laugh. You needed a laugh. This provided a good laugh.

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Brodigan is Grand Poobah of this here website and when he isn't writing words about things enjoys day drinking, pro-wrestling, and country music. You can find him on the Twitter too.

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