The Triumph of Beauty

This video clip has been an enormous hit on YouTube, and there is a reason.

Most people are not really bad or evil, just incredibly lukewarm, and easily swayed by the opinion of the crowd. So it was with the audience of a television show in the UK known as "Britain's Got Talent" (similar to our "American Idol"). They laughed when a 47-year-old woman, a rather plain-looking spinster from from West Lothian, Scotland, stood in front of a skeptical crowd -- and that's putting it rather mildly -- and said she wanted to be a professional singer like Elaine Paige.

The panel of judges rolled their eyes in condescension. Then she began to sing, and a once-hostile audience roared its approval. She was their heroine from that moment on. Even a pompous @$$ like Simon Cowell conceded to having misjudged her -- well, not really, but you'll get the idea.

There are two things many of us find when we least expect them; one is beauty, the other truth. But where there is genuine beauty, there is truth, and where it is seen for what it is, those who earnestly seek it will be drawn to it. That was the lesson for British television audiences of late. It is a lesson for the rest of us. That is why this week's Tip of the Black Hat is off to Susan Boyle, the woman whose beauty overcame the beast.

You go, girl!
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