Susan Boyle: Cultural Insight

I'm relatively oblivious to much of popular culture. That's bad in that I'm a chaplain on a university campus where most of the people I'll share a table with are very interested in popular culture. In fact, it's usually popular culture that distracts them from their studies and keeps them up late at night and makes them late to lectures.

But even I'm aware of the Susan Boyle phenomenon.
Many commentators, opinionated lot they are, have written about the woman, the surprise, the process and the reactions she's gotten. You can search online and find op/ed pages giving more column inches to Susan Boyle than to the Taliban, Tamil Tigers or torture these days. She's more popular than politics, the economy and Swine Flu. And why not? Don't we like underdogs, success stories and happy endings?

But is this an end or a beginning? What do we do with success? Does it enrich or corrupt?

One comment that jumped out at me on one of the YouTube clips was how Susan Boyle had been judged on her appearance and how wrong everyone had been. Rather than being polite and evasive about the preconceptions as my grandmother's generation might have done, people just said, "We were all laughing at you. No one's laughing now!"

Have you done that? Misjudged a person based on appearance or socio-economic circumstances? SlumDog Millionaire comes to my mind.

We are all much more than our name, our "look" or our car. We are more than our address, our job and our hair on a rainy blustery day.

What other stories, films or books illustrate this evolution of opinion as we get beyond the surface of things and into the substance of a person?

Join the conversation here. I'm weary of the reluctant dribble of feedback ONLINE. Click COMMENT and chime in.

See more Susan Boyle commentary at The Huffington Post.

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