by John Weber

Created on: February 12, 2009   Last Updated: March 10, 2009

When I was a small-town teenager, sports heroes and movie stars were the role models of my generation. And while dreams of becoming the next Dr. J made me spend hours on the hardcourt, Hollywood's Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood, the two major stars of the 80's, contributed to my character in an entirely different way.

Reynolds, the number-one box office attraction from '78 to 82, played a smarmy, grinning, Trans-Am driving cowboy who removed his hat often, but for "one reason only". Eastwood, meanwhile, played both the mysterious "Man With No Name" and Dirty Harry (cowboys of a different sort) dispensing hardcore violence cum justice in a way that film critic Pauline Kael described as "right-wing fantasy".

So there I was, a vacuous teenager, with Hollywood happily filling the void. Burt and Clint, Sex and Violence: the two defining forces of a "make-my-day", "feels-good-do-it" generation.

But as Heath Leger's Joker (a villain, not a role model, you understand) might ask, "Why so sad?" Well, it's this. I'm feeling a little betrayed. Betrayed by a media machine that made me think that women were nothing more than sex objects and that Clint's strong, silent type of violence served as a reasonable facsimile for depth. In short, they were wrong . . . as was I.

But these days, thankfully, there's the emergence of a new kind of role model, the kind born of hard times and desperate measures. And if you believe author Malcolm Gladwell, it's no accident.

In his fascinating book on sociological change, Gladwell describes The Tipping Point as "the level at which momentum for change becomes unstoppable." And while Obama's election is a great example of that crest-of-the-wave momentum, I believe the movement towards this particular tipping point began years earlier.

In other words, the same kind of social intuition that caused Clint to start making a new genre of movie (Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino; movies with a new depth, a reap-what-you-sew morality), set the stage for Obama to become the right man in the right place at the right time. Or, as Gladwell might say, personify the last stage of a social epidemic that's been spreading for years.

But don't take my word for it. Put Obama's incredible success to the Gladwell test, or what the author calls the Three Rules of Epidemics.

First, The Law of the Few states that, "the success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of three kinds of people: Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen, with

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