Free Susan Boyle by John McShane Page B

Scotland.’
    Former Downing Street spin-doctor Alastair Campbell advised politicians to recognise her ‘authenticity’.
    In a post on his blog, Campbell said: ‘If politicians tend to read the Sunday papers with a mix of horror and trepidation, one person who must read them week after week with a sense of his own skills in shaping the popular culture agenda is Simon Cowell. The overnight sensation that is Susan Boyle and her 25 million YouTube hits is the latest chapter in Cowell’s story. Ifthere is a lesson from her success for politicians, it is authenticity. It is the only communication that works.’
    Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond, who was also from West Lothian, sent a letter of support. The SNP leader said: ‘Please accept my warmest congratulations to you for your stunning performance on the ITV show Britain’s Got Talent . I would like to wish you the very best of success for the remainder of the competition and in your ambitions for the future.’
    Emails from admirers in Australia, Canada and the United States were published on West Lothian Council’s website. One fan from Pennsylvania wrote: ‘Your town should look up to this wonderful woman and be so very proud of what she has accomplished.’
    More and more assessments of Susan and her impact were being made. And each one seemed more complicated and highbrow than the last.
    Dr Robert Canfield, Professor of Anthology at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, published an academic essay about the Boyle phenomenon, entitled ‘Susan Boyle And The Power Of The Moral Imagination’
    ‘Buried within the human psyche are feelings, yearnings, anxieties too deep for words, usually,’ he wrote. ‘Always it is something outside ourselves that touches us, somehow, where we feel most deeply. At such moments we remember that we are humans – not merely creatures but human beings, profoundly and deeply shaped by a moral sensibility so powerful that itbreaks through our inhibitors; it can burst out, explode into public view, to our own astonishment.’
    Dr Canfield said, in response to emailed questions, that Boyle captured ‘the hopes of a multitude.’
    Her performance resonates with millions, he said, because ‘most of us in our heart of hearts have severe doubts about ourselves. So when a Susan Boyle appears on stage before a clearly condescending audience in a society that can read class status in every move, the hairdo, the dress, she appears as a loser. And we feel for her. We see how precarious her position is, how vulnerable she is, and we feel for her,’ he said.
    ‘We can see in her an objectification of what we fear about ourselves. So when she comes forth with that voice, that music – as if we have discovered Judy Garland at the age of 47 – we are thrilled. She’s going to make it, we think. She’s going to win (!). And we unconsciously invest ourselves in her achievement.’
    Patricia Williams, a professor of law at Columbia University in New York, likened Susan’s story to the election of Barack Obama. ‘Boyle’s ability to up-end conventional preconceptions is akin to what the “black is beautiful” movement of the 1970s tried to accomplish: a debunking of surface-based biases in favour of deeper commitments to fairness, intelligence, courage, humility, patience, re-examined aesthetics and the willingness to listen.
    ‘Dismissing her – or anyone – based on carelessexpectations about what age or lack of employment supposedly signify is the habit of mind common to all forms of prejudice.’
    As always, there are voices that go ever so slightly against the crowd – not always too tastefully, either. In one case it was South Park , the surreal and often crude, cartoon series that mentioned Susan in an episode in which the characters run off to Somalia to become pirates.
    In a letter to his parents, Kyle’s little brother Ike writes: ‘Dear Mommy and Daddy – I am running away. I am sorry, but I can no longer