Gabrielle Union helps Americans with Empathy

Look at these photos. Decide whether Gabby had a nose job. Now step back and think about what went into your decision. Are you a fawning fangirl or utterly in love with her, no matter what? Are you pro-plastic surgery or a pro-ponent of MAC make-up? Indeed, are you an expert: surgeon or cosmetologist? Do you have issues with African Americans trying to "conform?" (and conform to what: is Hollywood success somehow different)? Or is one's face one's own business--literally and figuretively? To do with as one pleases. Are you into so-called "common sense" and figure she just lost some of that baby fat we silent majority of men love...and a little just came off her nose naturally to produce a narrow, more svelte (and Hollywood-conforming?) visage?














The point of this exercize is that I wanted to find some common ground on decisions and opinions. Too many people have been losing their minds in either attack or defense of Barack Obama and everything he represents or is allegory for with dozens of permutations of that formula. We have ethnic and caste commentary given to the swine flu. We have acrimony over who'll replace Justice David Souter even though we're months away from anything concrete.
The key isn't surgical analysis, in my opinion, though analysis and empirical measure is damn important. It's "empathy" in decisionmaking. In writing, or news reporting or essay drafting or love or sex or at work at school or foreign policy. Yes, the word that doesn't mean sympathy or siding with someone or being a pussy or a dupe. My definition is an amalgam of many: Intellectual and emotional awareness and understanding of another person's or group's thoughts, feelings and behavior, even those that are distressing. Observation based on available info and our bank of knowledge, is subject to so many, many factors. Some not so positive or touchy feely. Most without due regard to empathy. Soon the actual truth doesn't even matter--just who's lining up on what side, or whose opinion rules. And if we learn a truth and that truth is tested and verified as fact, there's always lunatic naysayers rather than healthy skeptics doing the analysis. Alternatively you have the people who's answer was vindicated with "truth" wanting to beat folk who were "wrong" over the head the results, rather than help them learn from it, and build.
Of course, I just think Gabby's pretty, regardless. And she's a decent actress, too. But I try to understand other views--even ones that are distressing. That's written here on this blog without an agenda...