The more we see of him, the more we hear him, the more we are all perplexed by Barack Obama. The American people voted for him and wished fervently for his success, but increasingly they feel, as Richard Cohen wrote in the Washington Post, that “he casts no shadow.” … This should not be too surprising. When you vote for a fictional character, you will likely get a fictional character. If you thought that Obama was going to redeem America’s original sin of racism, and that this would heal the nation’s financial plight, you were obviously deluded. -Had Enough Therapy?
I’ve not found a better description of Mr. Obama in all the time since he first burst onto the public scene; he is a man without a shadow, a man who simply isn’t there. And in this, Mr. Obama is the perfect reflection of our society.
The “beauty premium” adds 5 percent to the lifetime earnings of attractive men, and 4 percent to the lifetime earnings of women. Economist Daniel Hamermesh argues that an attractive man earns an average of $250,000 of “beauty premium” income over his “least-attractive counterpart.” Plastic surgery is the answer for many. As Jessica Bennett reports, “We are a culture more sexualized than ever . . . with technology that’s made it easier to ‘better’ ourselves, warping our standards for what’s normal.” With plastic surgery and “enhancement” procedures becoming routine, a beauty arms race results, and those who are in competition find themselves “running to stand still.” Cosmetic surgery, Botox, and an array of technologies and product lines compete for an expanding market of people running hard in the race to stay or get ahead. -Albert Mohler
We live in a world of the visual, where what appears to be is considered more real than what is. If you listen, you can find this in almost everything around you. We live in a constant movie set, surrounded by plotless special effects. Or rather, the plot serves only to bring us special effects, or another shot of a perfectly beautiful person. The great thing about a plotless movie is that we can project any possible moral lesson onto it; we bring our morals to the movie, and impose them as we watch. Believing the meaning of all things is in the reader, or the one who experience, and never in the author (or the Author), we have built a world where this prophecy, this belief, is always true.
Into this world steps a plotless man. A man who believes, moment by moment, what the latest scientific poll tells him to believe. We project our beliefs onto him.
“He will bring us together.” But plotless people, like plotless movies, can never bring us together; they can only leave us where we started, only firmer in our own little worlds.
“He will heal the racial divide.” But people who have nothing but their race cannot heal racial divides; to heal a cut, skin must bridge the gap. To heal the racial divide, the person must bring people together over a higher goal. Plotless men have no higher goals; it’s all just special effects.
“He will heal our ruptured relationships with the world.” Like racial divides, ruptured relationships can only be healed by turning away from the relationship, and towards something larger. There is nothing larger than the skin deep beauty in a man with no shadow.
Mr. Obama fits out beauty driven society perfectly; he is a mirror of ourselves, our lives, as they are really lived every day.
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