As IF Times

link Reception for Obama Is More Sober Than in 2008 – NYTimes.com.

Well it has been 5 years and the comedown was bound to happen.  The swooning crowds, the breathless adulation, the rock-star persona, the trance-like state of delusion by the masses.  They are all subsiding.  We’re not talking Justin Bieber here, that’s still going on.  We are talking about an obscure senator from Illinois five years after bursting on the scene seemingly out of nowhere to reach the world’s highest office.  That the fascination has lasted this long is amazing by itself.   Justin Bieber, to his credit, at least has a basic talent.

On any given day as you stand in line at the checkout stands at the supermarket, you will be exposed to the numerous blaring headlines of Hollywood gossip magazines offering profoundly important news about the most picayune activities of the glitterati. We find that Kim Kardashian is pregnant!  It’s a miracle! We know that Justin likes Selena, but she likes someone else’s boyfriend and Taylor Swift is miffed and Jennifer’s wedding is postponed and Brad suffers heartbreak and Jessica is fat.

Gripping stuff, but mostly it’s all noise to normal and intelligent people.  Only 12 year old girls have an obsessive appetite for these morsels of drivel dressed up as fresh news on their idols.

Apparently there remains that hard core journalistic equivalent of 12 year old girls that are still intoxicated by the cloud of greatness that emanates from the incumbent healer of the earth and saviour of mankind.   According to stories such as the one in the linked article, by the New York Times no less,  journalists that are not Chris Matthews and increasingly much of the general public are sobering up.  It’s the equivalent of the realization that the Korean rapper Psy is a one act phenomenon…which he is.  Like William Hung of American Idol fame, his 15 minutes are over.   Over the past half year, there is increasing evidence that the adoring Obama fan base is falling away as it becomes obvious that beyond the ability to read off a screen, the man has no talent.  It would be as if people listened to Vanna White’s opinions on world affairs solely by virtue of her skill at turning letters on a board.

When you hear the same old banalities and cheap bromides offered again and again as sage wisdoms delivered in that same condescending pedantic tone, especially if read off a screen, the credibility is lost.  When you lose credibility, you lose audience.  When you lose audience, you lose effectiveness and influence.

When people are at raucous party and especially if they are in an altered state, every conversation is witty, every person is fascinating and the loud amorphous music all sounds intoxicatingly brilliant.  In the sober moments of daytime however, those same conversations are banal, the people are bores and the music becomes just so much cacophonous noise.  Methinks we are at that sobering moment.

Update: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/obama-second-term-doldrums-93295.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1627b9a4-e234-11e2-87ec-00144feabdc0.html#slide0

link Video – Kate Upton and the Rise of the Curvy Customer – WSJ.com.

Years ago, a business associate remarked that the Hong Kong women were all so stylistically  avant garde.  When asked why, the retort was that they were all getting breast implants to make them look curvier.  This was an odd observation to me because I had never known that curvy women had ever NOT been in fashion.

I tell this story because it illustrates the difference between what’s considered fashionable and what’s considered attractive.  As we know, the two can be poles apart.  Of course, different cultures will dictate distinct preferences as well.  In the African Masai culture, women with elongated necks are considered attractive.  In asian cultures, big feet on women are unappealing.  In many cultures, thickness is an attractive trait of otherwise ugly men…thickness of wallet that is.  In modern western culture, preposterously large breasts on an otherwise slim body are considered attractive in women.

For decades, western culture has been coerced to believe that a thin, almost boyish profile was the ideal for fashionable women.  This has  much to do with the fact that the fashion industry is dominated by gay personalities and so their tastes become our tastes.   In the extreme case, ‘heroin chic’ was the look desired for many runway models only a decade ago.  Even now, women still strive to attain a weight profile more resembling that of a 12 year old boy than a normal female.

Growing up,  it was Farrah, Raquel and Sophia, not Twiggy or Kate Moss that jump-started puberty in young boys.  To this day, women can aspire to be like Gwynneth, but speaking for all men, Christina Hendricks would likely be a more ideal dinner date.  The linked article implies that women are now accepting the ‘curves are good’ paradigm espoused by Kate Upton.  While you’d have to be awfully nearsighted to mistake Upton for a boy, she is hardly Rubenesque by any stretch.  Women may finally have come to realize that men are generally attracted to curvy women…at least straight men.

Perhaps the tyranny of the boyish look for women is coming to an end.  And this is a good thing.  Women can’t do it and men don’t like it.  To be candid, we’re talking curvy here,  not completely round.  That’s another discussion.  Now if we could only do something about tattoos….