Susan Boyle.

Since I posted on Susan Boyle she has become a real phenomenon with over 50 million hits on You Tube and some very good essays on her and what she means to a world gone somewhat awry in the last few decades.

American Digest from where I first learned of SB is keeping tabs noting first an essay by Collette Douglas Home, The Beautyl That Matters Is Always On The Inside.

Susan is a reminder that it’s time we all looked a little deeper. She has lived an obscure but important life. She has been a companionable and caring daughter. It’s people like her who are the unseen glue in society; the ones who day in and day out put themselves last. They make this country civilised and they deserve acknowledgement and respect.

Susan has been forgiven her looks and been given respect because of her talent. She should always have received it because of the calibre of her character.

The Anchoress weighs in with her particular insight.

Why is the world so obsessed with a woman so “ordinary” – even her name seems “flat and ordinary” – in every way, except in her powerful voice?

I suspect it is because Susan Boyle has reminded us of something we’ve forgotten for too long. Hypnotised by Madison Avenue and Hollywood and the culture of youth, we’ve forgotten that the things they offer to us as “the norm” are ideals, and mostly fake ones. In embracing those fake ideals (how much money was spent last year in cosmetic surgeries and teeth-whitening?) we’ve forgotten that beyond all of those superficialities, we each have within us something of much greater value than perky breasts and unlined skin: the divine spark, the God-kiss, that lives in each and every one of us – no exceptions.

I think we look at Susan Boyle and her artistry (and she is clearly an artist) and we think, “wait a second…that’s not the narrative! Ordinary people who look ordinary, and live obscurely and who don’t run with the herd are not supposed to be great.” And then we dare to think: “what if there is greatness in all of us?”

That’s quite a thought, isn’t it – almost subversive – that there may be greatness in each of us, but that it goes unappreciated, because what is great in us is not valued by the people who “define” things and set the narratives?

William Tate at American Thinker sees her as the ‘anti-Obama’. It seems almost sacreligious to bring the O into it but the comparison is worth making.

At a time when the President of the United States feels compelled to use a teleprompter for even the most minor appearances, when Grecian columns are necessary props for campaign speeches, when public figures are as carefully packaged as your morning cereal boxes, after watching plain Susan Boyle sing with a voice for the ages, you feel like you have witnessed a real person do something that’s real. And right. And good. No, extraordinarily good.

She is, in effect, the anti-Obama. No artifice. No teleprompter. As likely to stumble over words, or do a spontaneous bump and grind as she is to belt out a song that could leave you with chill-bumps.

Now I must get off somewhat late to my mundane work! Well you wouldn’t want to hear me sing anyway. But I do have two cute grandkids:

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