Spooky

One of the problems with HDTV, of course, is that reveals facial details that blurrier and airbrushed pictures usually hide. I can't look at a hi-def rendition of any movie with Ewan MacGregor in it because I really want to scoop out his giant forehead protrusion with whatever tools are at hand. Likewise, I have come to notice that another person with a lot of recent TV exposure, one Barack Obama, has a smaller but obvious wen on the side of his nose.

Well, nobody's perfect, but that's not the point. It reminded me of something else I'd seen, and after racking my brain, I realized it was the portraits I've viewed of Abraham Lincoln, who also had a little nodule famously sticking out under his right cheek. More of these portriats have emerged recently in the post-election frenzy that has magazine editors falling over themselves to find comparisons between Lincoln and Obama. Why, they're both from Illinois! They both have limited experience but oratorical gifts! They both write their own speeches on paper! Barack has not done anything to discourage these comparisons, either. He speaks often of Lincoln as a model, and recently has adopted the strategy of choosing cabinet members from among political frenemies, like Lincoln, as chronicled in Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals."

Commentators have also speculated intriguingly about Barack's birthdate, which is August 4, 1961, exactly nine months after the election of John F. Kennedy. Like all the recent enthusiastic couplings in celebration of Obama's victory, there was a lot of boffing in November of 1960; one would like to think that Obama's father and mother thought about the potential achievements of their about-to-be-conceived offspring that evening in the wafting breezes of Hawaii. Forty-eight years later, Obama will enter the White House with a youthful contingent of followers, and young and beautiful family, exciting and enchanting the world scene as Kennedy did in the Camelot years.

Now those old enough to remember the 1960s may also recall all the coincidental similarities drawn between the presidencies of JFK and Honest Abe. Each was elected in a year ending in 60; had a Vice President named Johnson; Lincoln's personal secretary was named Kennedy, and Kennedy's was named Lincoln, yada yada. Lincoln was considered the greatest American president because he saw the Union through the war and preserved it. Kennedy, also an eloquent speaker, managed to save the country (and the world) by not going nuclear over the Cuban Missile Crisis, against the advice of his war machine.

It is in the spirit of a Kevin Bacon interrelationship paradigm to see how Obama, Kennedy and Lincoln all seem to be interconnected in some soaring and inspirational historic paradigm. What is dreadful in all these situational comparisons is that Kennedy and Lincoln were both assassinated in their primes by idiotic southerners. Not the way we wish to conclude these historic parallels.

So I'd rather read about how Obama wants to model himself after FDR as well, and bring a renewed New Deal enthusiasm back to the national scene. Okay, Roosevelt also died in office, but at least he had a good long run.