Make a custom bumper sticker! | What's in a face?

You may have already seen the comparison-pic of Beatle assassin Mark Chapman and character assassin Karl Rove that's been making the blog rounds -- Wonkette started it, I think. But having read Malcolm Gladwell's article, "The Naked Face," and having myself attended a white-collar crime (prevention) seminar hosted by real-life face reader Mac Fulfer, it got me wondering....

The similarities between the prison photo of Chapman, taken in 1998 at age 43, and the White House portrait of Rove, snapped circa 2003 at about age 53, are beyond remarkable: The two could be murderous 'Tom' and his virtuous doppleganger 'Chambers,' switched as infants in the pages of Mark Twain's Puddin'head Wilson.

So what do their faces say about the two men? Are Rove and Chapman's mugs even that much alike, really? If so, what does it tell us about the distance between a life as the architect of Compassionate Conservatism, a defining social movement, and a life as a lone gunman? It is a hallowed platform-plank of the American Dream that every first-grader has roughly identical odds of growing up to be president. And yet, like other fairy tales, is there a far Grimmer truth lurking on the flip-side -- that our kids are also all equally likely to be Lee Harvey Oswald?

Rating Fulfer's Reading

So what does Mac actually tell us here -- That Rove is a manipulative genius, and that both men are psychologically walled off? And woe to the poor fucker who gets in their way when they get an idea in their heads? Hardly seems like it requires a master face reader to tell you that.

But a review of Fulfer's Amazing Face Reading provides some strong evidence to support his analysis -- or at least goes a long way toward showing he didn't base his reading on what everyone already knows. For example, "Huge, flared nostrils":

You are self-confident. Your life energy is so intense that you may overestimate your own abilities and go to extremes. You want to be acknowledged by others for your achievements. Highly creative and imaginative, you may tend to think you are invincible and take on too much. You must learn to avoid excess.

Also, "Full lower lip":

You have a "gift of gab" when it comes to convincing others of your point of view, espeically about the external world of facts and figures. [...] Your focus is on doing. Your challenge is learning to connect with and express your feelings.

Perhaps most striking is the "Adaptability cleft," which is absent from Chapman's face, but Rove's got in spades:

You have extreme playfulness and are adventurous. You are also extremely adaptible and may try may try many different jobs or relationships if the ones you have are not to your liking

It's funny to think, but maybe Chapman was only a dimple away, on that day in 1980, from the capacity to imagine away his demons with the dream of a world living in peace.

Because I feel like shamelessly plugging the guy and for no other reason, purchase Amazing Face Reading at Amazon and know thine enemy today!

To be completely up front, my cynical side immediately wants to pigeonhole "face reading" along with the carnival barker's guess-yer-weight game, or the Tarot reader's prognosticative powers: I zense you are at zee crossroadzz.... But as I said, I happened to attend one of Fulfer's seminars a few months ago, and I witnessed him instantly diagnose the psychologies of a dozen strangers to the rapturous applause of an audience that knew them all well. After the show, Fulfer even read my face: He said my ears and my chin say I'm a creative guy with my own way of doing things, and that whenever I receive instructions on the "proper technique," I should nod, smile, and ignore 'em. I dunno, maybe it was actually the needful pleading in my eyes he read that day -- I was having, I recall, an exceptionally bad one -- but it turned out to be some of the best damn advice I've ever gotten.

Anyway-------- I emailed him the pic and we spoke for 10 minutes. Despite my best efforts, Fulfer stayed away from any broad, metaphysical implications of his reading -- figure it out in the church of your choice, I guess -- and stuck to the bone structure. Here's what he said:

It was interesting to me that they are so similar to the visual eye, but there are important differences. The important features are, they both have extra large nostrils. They both get too many plates spinning at the same time and they both overestimate their capabilities.

They both have full cheeks, which says they are consensus builders. They can get anybody on the bandwagon. [...] And they've got good, strong chins. Both are Energizer bunnies, they can keep going and going and do what it takes to get the job done. [...] When they're going for it, you can't stop them.

The fat bottom lip says both are extremely guarded, very defensive, protected and shielded. When you're talking to them, you're bouncing off their wall. [...] They divide the world into "us" and "them." They don't trust anybody who's a "them," but are very loyal to the people they do connect with.

The similarities end at that point. Rove's forehead expands outwards, and he's got a really tall forehead. Chapman is the opposite. Chapman is almost trapezoidal. [...] Chapman is not a brain, whereas Rove is probably one of the smartest presidents we've had. He's got the whole Darth Vader thing going on. You've got a guy that's a manipulator/planner/genius and a guy that's not. Also, Rove has a cleft chin. He's extremely adapatable, which Chapman is not.

The closest Fulfer came to addressing the broader implications of the Chapman/Rove comparison came at the end of our conversation:

What's in a face?

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