WHICH IS WHY GOD GAVE US RADIO:

True Colors (VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN, 10/19/08, NY Times)

It can be emotionally overwhelming to see human flesh in high definition.

Consider Joe Biden. When he’s upset, he blanches slightly, particularly around his mouth. It seemed to happen this way, at least, during this year’s vice-presidential debate, as he was remembering not knowing in 1972 whether his sons would survive the car accident that killed his wife and daughter. On my HD television screen, a contrast formed between the patch of pallor by his mouth and the dark-honey hues of his chin, cheeks and forehead.

Had Biden accidentally rubbed off bronzer while the camera wasn’t looking? Or was his physical and emotional constitution simply defined, in part, by an idiosyncrasy of blood flow — a detail of Biden’s body to which millions of high-def viewers were suddenly privy?

There’s an excerpt from George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” currently posted on ads in some subway cars in New York; it perfectly expresses my squeamishness about perceiving the world too closely. “If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life,” Eliot wrote, “it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

If nothing else, perhaps fear of what HD shows will kill off the useless debates.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 19, 2008 7:49 AM