Barack Obama and the Voice of God

What Obama owes to the omniscient, authoritative voices of James Earl Jones and Morgan Freeman

Everett

Morgan Freeman as God in Bruce Almighty

In the 1950s and '60s, God was a man named Alexander Scourby. He was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., of Greek immigrant parents and attended college in West Virginia, but he spoke in a "deep and resonant voice" (as Wikipedia puts it) and — here is the key point — with more than a touch of a British accent. Long after Britain had exhausted its resources in World War II and lost its empire, a British accent conveyed authority, dignity, power.

In Hollywood, they sometimes refer to an omniscient but unseen narrator as a VOG, short for voice of God. Scourby was...

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