New U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland Suzi LeVine was sworn into office today on a Kindle copy of the Constitution, the Washington Post says. Here's an image:


I'm having a hard time with this. I know there are three million other more important things happening right now. But ceremonies are important, too. Ceremonies say a lot about who we are, and you shouldn't just thoughtlessly change the symbols in a ceremony without paying attention to what the change means.

The problem with being sworn in on a Kindle is that it contains any number of books. It's like being sworn in on a big stack of books (the Bible, the Da Vinci Code, 50 Shades of Grey, The Courage to Be Rich) with a Constitution placed on top of the stack. Why bother pledging at all? Hell, why not pledge on an iPhone? It's connected to the internet, after all, and the Constitution is reprinted all over the internet! Good enough, right? I'm not saying that LeVine will be a bad ambassador because of this, but the point of swearing in—that you're pledging your fealty to something sacred—seems a hell of a lot less meaningful when you're pledging to a screen that can be wiped clean at the push of a button.