Comments on: Till the fat lady sings

By: sergey

sergey — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:40:57 +0000

Spengler from AsiaTimes has a rather gloomy perspective on this issue:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/spengler.html

By: Tex

Tex — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 05:26:50 +0000

I think Susan Boyle came across as quite clever. I’m totally serious. She did of course seem, frumpy, child-like, and out-of-style too. But she was part simpleton, part smart-ass, with tons of talent and a good portion of charm.

And the news that she has spent her entire adulthood caring for her parents until their deaths. And that when her mother died she was too depressed to sing for months. She took care of her parents because she loved them!!

Forget Johnny Cash. God Bless Susan Boyle.

By: KBK

KBK — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:57:59 +0000

The condescension of the judges and audience towards an obviously impaired individual who happens to be able to sing well was disgusting. I couldn’t finish watching it.

By: abdul7591

abdul7591 — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 02:46:14 +0000

God, what a beautiful voice, and what a beautiful song! God bless this woman. She moves me to tears.

By: abdul7591

abdul7591 — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 02:44:57 +0000

God, what a beautiful voice! The song itself is stunning, but it’s just delightful that such gorgeous, sultry singing could becoming from someone who doesn’t fir most people’s conceptions of sultry beauty. God bless her! I wish her every success.

By: Leslie

Leslie — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 22:30:05 +0000

I don’t know what words to put on it. I just thought while watching her interact with the judges that there was childlike quality to her, so when I read about the issue of oxygen at birth (I certainly don’t know if the report was correct, but it was in a British paper), I thought ooohhhh, that’s what it was. But, again, it was just a thought I had while watching her. The singing voice, so mature, even sophisticated sounding; the speaking voice, that of a gleeful little girl. A pleasantly jarring contrast.

By: newton

newton — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:47:12 +0000

Does Boyle have a learning disability? Or maybe she has Savant syndrome, perhaps? The symptoms described seem to match her to a tee.

By: Oblio

Oblio — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 19:12:35 +0000

Leslie, you make a nice point. Sometimes people with disabilities have gifts, too. Neither the disability nor the gift makes the whole person.

By: Leslie

Leslie — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:54:16 +0000

I think the immediate dismissiveness toward Boyle had more to do with the fact that on some level one could immediately sense the slight lacking of mental faculties, a more intelligent but equally naive Forest Gump. (Reports say that she lost oxygen for several minutes as a baby and that she was always “slow” thereafter. You can tell from the way she speaks that she retains an innocence that most of us lose as we “mature.”) Like dogs in a pack that instinctively attack a weak or infirm dog, some primitive us/them urge, goaded on by the judges, encouraged the crowd to assert itself (the very appeal of the show, a modern version of the Coliseum). Had the scene been a bar, fisticuffs might well have ensued. Instead, the voice rang out, and suddenly this frumpy little woman displayed a power that most everyone in the audience, both at the scene and on TV, lacked, and it told us to back off, there’s something special going on here. The event–complete with a paradoxical song about one’s dreams being destroyed by life–was, to me, a sublime subversion of the dominant paradigm. The underdog winning out.

By: Oblio

Oblio — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 14:53:54 +0000

I love Susan Boyle because she answers (at least) two questions that needed answering:

When should you stop blossoming?

When is it too late for there to be a future?