I Hate Heroes

Yes, this "hero" crap is gettin' pretty stale for me.

It's getting kinda watered down, don't ya think? Just about everyone is a hero these days. Every poor schlub that joined the military hoping to escape their soul-crushing middle American existence and subsidize a community college education is a hero. Morons who ride their motorcycles without helmets and then kiss pavement at 90 mph get to be heroes just because their no-longer-needed left kidney ends up in some little girl. The worst are those heroes that qualify by keeping their head down and going to work at the tool and die shop every day for 40 years so they can put lunchables in their trashy kids' backpacks.

I have news. Their misery does not make them heroes. It just makes them miserable. And guess what? They're bringing the rest of us down as well.

Whatever happened to crawling through fifty yards of barbed wire under withering machine gun fire to rescue wounded comrades? THAT qualifies.

I want my hero status served with the following, though not necessarily in this order: glory, fame, money, free food and drinks, and the adoration of very attractive women. In fact, if I can have the last three, I'm willing to be well known as the world's most cowardly asshole.

But what's really bugging me now is the anointing of presidential contenders as heroes. Specifically, we hear about Rudy Giuliani and George Bush as heroes for the way they responded on and after 9-11. It's a storyline that even their enemies grudgingly acknowledge.

But give me a break. Everyone knows that it is never easier to know what to say and do than at a moment of crisis like 9-11. You can pull the script for that "never-say-surrender-all-pull-together" hokum off any shelf in Hollywood. A ten-year-old would have the sense to behave just as they did. It should be the greatest relief to any public figure to be able to operate in a world of black and white like that just for a few minutes before returning to struggle with shades of gray, competing priorities and factions. What else might Giuliani and Bush have said as they stood atop the piles of rubble?

"You people are fucked. If you need me, call me at my beach house."