Doubting is Uniquely American

It’s appalling, really, to observe the lengths that Americans will go to doubt what they see and hear. To cast doubt on anything that one sees that is unexpected or out of the ordinary.

I’ve always wondered why that is, and now I think I have an answer, thanks to the performance of Jackie Evancho and the stormy internet flame wars that erupted in her wake. And now I also have an answer for this question: why did I post a piece on her performance yesterday, a piece quite out of the ordinary for a political blog.

People make suspects out of extraordinary individuals.

To be extraordinary a person out performs all others in their area of expertise. And people by their very nature feel threatened in the face of excellence. They feel ordinary. They feel inadequate. They become miserable and unhappy with their lives.

So when Jackie Evancho belted out that Puccini aria the other night, the immediate reaction was disbelief. She was lip syncing. The microphone had been altered. To accept those explanations, though, is to also accept the fact that this was a plot hatched by the girl’s parents and the producers of the NBC reality series. The entire thing was an elaborate hoax and gullible viewers and members of the live audience were all fooled.

Isn’t that just so sad?

Imagine the scandal that would ensue should all be revealed that this was all staged. Memory isn’t so short that the folks that produce TV shows have forgotten the public furor that erupted when it was revealed that Xavier Cugat was fed the answers for the 50’s TV game show “$64,000 Question.”

It’s just so sad and such a poor reflection on our society.

It’s just as sad as those who dismiss our president’s glib speeches by emphasizing the presence of Telepromptrs, as if that explained why Barack Obama has such a keen sense of timing and stage presence. His speeches are polished to perfection but because he doesn’t memorize them, that makes him a fake.

Indeed, it is this same behavior that lies behind the “Birther” movement. The very legitimacy of this president is questioned. When has the citizenship of a president ever been questioned? Never. So just as little Jackie isn’t really a child prodigy because she has an altered microphone, Barack Obama isn’t really president because he was born in Kenya.

We Americans are experts at inventing the facts when our sense of adequacy is in danger of being questioned, aren’t we.

Did You Hear About That Little Girl?

I don’t watch “Reality TV” unless it is a news program. That’s about as real as it gets for me. No, when I switch on the tube it is either to watch (or listen to) the news or to escape from what I just watched (or listened to).

So I was probably the last person on the planet to hear about that kid, that little skinny 10 year old girl with the voice of a professional mezzo-soprano (I think) sing a selection from Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicchi, “O Mio Babbino Caro.”

In Italian, naturally.

Well, yes, I heard about it the next day, Wednesday, but it really didn’t come under my radar until today when they kept mentioning it on MSNBC while I was waiting for them to announce whether Judge Walker was going to lift his self-imposed Proposition 8 stay. So there was a lull in the day and I heard the performance was on You Tube, so I took a look.

This is what I saw:

Now the really awful thing about how the media is hyping this girl’s performance is by calling her “America’s Answer to Susan Boyle.” There really isn’t any comparison at all. The surprise in Boyle’s case is how the voice of an angel can come from the mouth of everyone’s maiden aunt. Little Jackie has been singing for only 2 years.

No, if we are to do this little girl any justice at all, perhaps we should all remember another child prodigy who recently passed. In reality, Jackie Evancho is the next Beverly Sills.

Here is Beverly Sills performing – at the tender age of 8 years.