Politico kind of buries the lede here:
The inaugural team made a show of announcing that the festivities to mark Obama’s second Inauguration would be greatly curtailed this year as a nod to tough economic times. Rather than the 10 official balls that the president and first lady zipped around to in 2009, this year there would be only two: the Commander-in-Chief’s Ball, for 4,000 servicemen and -women and families of deployed soldiers, and then another for everyone else.
Left unsaid, however, was that the two balls together would host tens of thousands of people and feature a stout array of high-profile entertainers performing over two floors of the vast convention center. Among them: Stevie Wonder, Usher, Katy Perry, Marc Anthony, John Legend, Smokey Robinson and Alicia Keyes. “So it’s not a 10 [balls] down to two type situation,” concedes [Steve] Kerrigan.
Continue reading Psst: Obama’s second Inaugural Ball schedule designed to keep hoi polloi away.