And Another One Bites the Dust

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Brett Favre, Entertainment, Football, hero-worship, heroes, Olympic Games, Sports

I been thinkin’ about heroes. I don’t know quite what to make of them to be honest. We use the term a lot, and it would behoove (does that mean acquire horse feet?) us to understand the word I would think.

And I don’t think we do. We seem to call a lot of folks heroes whom I don’t think really are. Living with a nasty disease, especially if young gets you called a hero. Being extra kind to someone can get you called one as well. Doing something sorta dangerous, carefully, and thus maybe helping another is often described that way.

People who are called heroes usually say they aren’t. I don’t know if that means they really are, meaning that denial is a sign of heroship, or whether we should take them at their word. I guess they should know. I mean only they are in their own head and know what the motivation truly was, right?

The dictionary has a lot of definitions, meaning I guess that there are lots of kinds of heroes. In mythology for instance, heroes were usually divine, strong and courageous, and favored by the Gods. They often did some amazing feats, such as single-handedly killing gazillions of warriors.

Heroes are also defined as those who have done deeds indicating a nobleness of purpose, or who have given their lives. But they can also be just the most prominent persons in their fields of endeavor. Or the lead character in a novel. Kinda descending order here it seems. Don’t forget the hero sandwich, which is a thing and not a person.

So maybe some heroes are “really big” and some are not to be taken so literally. I’m not sure, as I said. There are heroines, but they seem usually confined to literature. It seems wrong to me, since I think women are most heroic for giving birth. Everyone knows what women will do to protect their young–Sarah is a Mama Grizzly after all.  On second thought, she may have ruined that whole idea.

Somewhere along the timeline of history, we began engaging in hero-worship. If people who engaged in noble causes are heroes, then worshiping them doesn’t seem such a bad thing. Depending on how you define worship that is. Looking up to, or admiring? That seems okay. To me at least. But the dictionary seems to refer to it as “foolish or excessive adulation.” That seems bad.

It is suggested that we have always had heroes of one sort or another. Maybe that’s true, I’m not sure about that either. The first Olympiads were held formally in about 776BCE. Winners received olive wreaths and marched around the stadium to lute and songs written by prominent poets of the day. One story has the HERO Pelops as the instigator of the first Olympiad. But there are other stories.

We seem to have continued the idea of heroes being sporting folk down through the ages. The gladiators were often given their freedom if they became heroic enough in the arena. And surely the members of soccer teams today are  worshiped worldwide,  as heroes in their respective countries.

We are no different here. We have worshiped lots of sports heroes. Jesse Owens, although we treated him badly at home, was worshiped for showing up Adolph at the ’36 games in Berlin. Jackie Robinson and Joe Lewis were heroes, especially to African-Americans, and later, to more of us. Mickey Mantle was one, and Joe DiMaggio certainly. Joe Namath was a hero in New York. Muhammed Ali was.

American astronauts were all heroes, it went with the job. Most of our Founding Fathers were. Some of our Presidents were as well, although that can go in and out of fashion it seems. occasionally a military man is. Dwight Eisenhower was more a hero as the leader of allied forces in WWII than he ever was as president.

For no apparently good reason, some actors and actresses are heroes. I think it’s just because they are “larger” than life on the “big” screen, so they look prettier and handsomer than most of the rest of us.

Ugly people aren’t heroes often I don’t think. But maybe I’m wrong. Tell me of any you can think of.

Which all leads to this:

Brett Favre was a hero to a lot of folks. In Green Bay certainly. They didn’t mind much when he came out of retirement to be a Jet. But he lost a lot of his lustre when he joined the evil Minna SO ta Vikings.

Lots of other footballer followers thought he was a great quarterback. In fact, they thought he was one of the best. Right wing Catholics liked to laud that he is a “great”  Catholic. This always seemed odd given that he and his wife didn’t marry until their daughter was about seven years old. That doesn’t seem very “Catholic” if you get my drift.  But since their marriage in 1996, he seemed a devoted husband and father.

That’s until the NFL began investigating Mr. Favre for sexting a TV reporter. Mr. Favre has no comment. I bet his wife has a lot of comments–that she is making to him.

Mostly people are snickering a lot.

I guess Mr. Favre isn’t a hero any more. He’s just another aging, arrogant, idiot, who doesn’t seem to understand that pictures and voicemail have a strange habit of reappearing in the most embarrassing of  places.

Makes ya wanna rethink who you give your worship to don’t it?

Just sayin’

Related Articles

• Brett Farve Kicks America In The Nuts Again. (bleacherreport.com)
• Will scandal cost Brett Favre $100 million? (panasianbiz.com)

What is Hero?

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heroes, heroic, psychology, sociology

A day or so ago, a young boy named Carlos became a “hero” in America. Having the presence of mind in a home break-in to secrete himself and his younger sister in a bathroom and call 911, he may well have averted serious injury or death to members of his family.

He is rightly so named a hero at the tender age of seven. Well, it got me to thinking about the word hero and of its over/mis-use today.

Hero has many definitions and we will ignore those that refer to mythological creatures and sandwiches. Generally we think of this definition when we think of hero:  a person of uncommon valor and bravery often resulting in the risking of one’s life or safety to help another. A secondary meaning may be a person who is “idealized ” as possessing superior qualities or who has achieved greatly in a field of endeavor.

Much of what passes for heroism today is sheer poppycock I would argue. In attempts to climb higher on the backs of each other, politicians are prepared to gush over every single person who signs up at a recruiting station to join our armed services. No longer the place of the man or woman who does some “heroic” deed, all soldiers are today heroes. Certainly all dead and wounded soldiers are so.

If we claim this status for them because they risk their lives to protect us (however tangential that might actually be), then by rights firefighters and police persons must also en mass be so considered. But what is to limit us here? Are not those who risk their lives to move us from place to place entitled to this appellation? The pilot? But then more people die in cars than planes, so how about the bus driver and cab driver?

How about those that risk life and limb to entertain us? The extreme sports enthusiast, the motorcycle daredevil? The plot thickens and the lines become even more blurred. Are sports figures heroic because they spend years perfecting their bodies and responses to win top honors?

To be sure, there are heroes among all these groups. But I don’t think it comes with the labelling of doctor, astronaut, or soldier. One can make a good argument that there is nothing heroic in well trained individuals making rational danger assessments and using finely honed skills that the rest of us don’t possess. One can make the argument that certain heroics are the product of minds not sharp enough to assess danger and are thus stupid choices, that luckily turned out well. One can make the argument that some heroics are the result of a primitive brain reaction that compels the body without giving time to rational thought. Again, luck wills out over common sense.

Yet undeniably there are heroes. Heroes can be those that don’t lose their heads in a traumatic experience, and can operate with calm logic. Seven year old Carlos meets this criteria. Heroes can be those that overcome horrific experiences and somehow will themselves forward to accomplish great things where so many others give up. Heroes can be those that find themselves the recipient of disastrous fate and stay with it, even though their lives are forever altered and dreams long dreamt discarded.

Heroes it seems come in two forms. Those that are physical and those that are inspirational. The hero might be the parent who really does risk life and limb to save a child, rationally concluding that this is the right thing to do, even if they die as a result. The one who dies for the many.

The inspirational are those people who offer us a glimpse of a life well lived–a life of purpose and sacrifice, of work and setback, but a life of determination, hope and a surety that if one pushes forward, surely good things will happen down the road. The ghetto kid who survives the mean streets of urban society and by hard work achieves the pinnacle of success in a field of endeavor far beyond the dreams of any of those he or she grew up around, comes to mind.

It seems to me that when we enlarge the pool so to speak, we diminish these folks and the incredible gift they offer us. We are well on the way to making the term hero meaningless. During the Olympics, we were told again and again that this athlete or that was the “hero” of their country, upon which everything (whatever that might mean) was riding. Hero because one could strap on skates and manage to twirl? I mean what is heroic in that?

It seems to me that heroism is a calculated risk. It is a rational assessment that a greater good can ensue if my actions work, and my death is not the only determiner of that assessment. It is a reasonable belief that I can be successful, live, and improve the plight of one, and hopefully many others. It is recognizing that I am ideally suited by training, intellect, psychology and so forth to take on this roll and that I have a better than even chance of being successful. Depending on the consequences of success or failure, my survival becomes a variable of greater or lesser significance.

We need to honor heroes, but we need to not water them down to the point that the concept is meaningless. I fear that we have done that. I’m happy to honor Carlos for his heroic actions, perhaps far beyond what we would expect of a child his age. The trite determination of a woman who skates days after her mothers untimely death,while sad, is simple not in the same league.

Just sayin’.

Why Am I The Only One Who Knows What to Do?

Tags

Afghanistan, celebrities, heroes, life in the meadow, Obama, The Contrarian, Tiger Woods, War

Well, I listened to the President’s speech the other night. It was not what I wanted to hear. I’m a product of Vietnam and a seemingly never ending Middle Eastern crisis. I don’t believe in happy endings when it comes to war torn planet earth.

I support the President’s decision however. No, it’s not the knee jerk, anything goes since he’s one of ours. I continue to disagree with Mr. Obama on a number of issues. I want Gitmo closed and now. I’m tired of the delays.

I want the “don’t ask, don’t tell” ended in the military. I wanted that done like January 21, 2009. I wanted a more supportive stance on gay rights in general.

I am sad that Mr. Obama supports the death penalty, and I wish he didn’t. I want this barbaric practice stopped everywhere.

I want universal health care for everyone, period. Perhaps he agrees with me on this, but he’s clearly ready for more compromise than I am.

The point is, is that I can disagree, while overall still supporting Obama because he is heads and shoulders above any alternative. My proclivity to despise my opponent (Bush and McCain for instance) is known. The Contrarian suggests that if GWB discovered a cure for cancer I would refuse it. That might be true. But it doesn’t stop me from objectively concluding that my choice is not without error in his political decisions some times.

President Obama got stuck with a mess not of his creation. That divine honor goes to Bush/Cheney/Rummy/Karl/ and the rest of the crew of incompetents. Mr. Obama is one of the brightest humans around and surrounds himself with top notch advisers. I have spoke my opposition, but I will wish this enterprise well and deeply hope that he knows a good deal more than me about the options and likely results.

Speaking of Tiger, (well, I segue my way), I’ve said that I don’t care about his personal business and it’s none of mine in the end. Yet the question remains to me, exactly when did we determine that our heroes were somehow above the rest of us in virtue? We seem to have come to that conclusion, but I want to know when.

If we look back to the time of Greece and Rome, there is no question that the ancients of that time regarded their gods and heroes as having “feet of clay.” Their limitations and their foibles were well known and alluded to in literature of the time.

Somewhere all the line, we changed and we imbued our “heroes” whether they be silver screen members or sports stars, with some perfection once reserved only to newborns. Somehow we have placed all our failure to live up to our own expectations on the backs of strangers and tried to live the virtuous life through them I guess.

Tiger Woods appears to be an expert at this. He has courted the celebrity spotlight, becoming probably the highest paid endorser of products, all the while, until now, keeping his private life just that, private. But alas, once the genie is out of the jar, well, the dam burst and the torrent of rumor and innuendo seems endless now. And sadly, it’s all so very predictable.

Predictable to us mere mortals who seem to know instinctively that sooner or later media mega stars are going to get caught if there is anything to be caught about. Too many eyes peering at you Tiger, from the housekeeper in the posh hotel to the guy pumping gas at the local station. They are all watching, and once the talk begins, they add their voices to what becomes a crescendo of accusation.

I guess I wonder when we will learn to pick better role models or not expect what cannot be lived by them. It seems mostly a function of ours and their immaturity.

Speaking of the Contrarian, he’s in rare form these days. I suspect you may not have realized it, but the Contrarian specializes in commercial examination. He has done a considerable study and has pondered the evidence with care. He concludes that the Victoria’s Secret commercials remain the standard by which all other commercials should be judged. They somehow have this amazing ability to never get old, never bore, never objectify, never offend.

I leave that to others to decide. I’m his wife after all, and I tend to think he is always right. Well, at least unless I’m more right. Then he’s wrong. But publicly, we keep a strong unassailable front. 

He figures that all his ogling research into scantily clad women certainly puts him him high on the list for his next interest: namely that he has heard that there is a profession known as “sexual anthropology.”

He would like to inquire into becoming one. He offers that he’s amenable to a work study program. I said I would check out the opportunities for him, via the computer. Yeah, and pigs fly and it’s don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.

Oh, just in case anyone is asking, his strength is returning. After a bout with wild eyebrow hair, he’s recovering nicely. Let me just explain briefly.

“I have these hairs from my eyebrow and they are hanging within view, and I need them cut.”

“Go get the spoon dear.”

Yes, yes, the masculine bohemoth I am married to, needs to cover his eye with a spoon as I approach with manicure scissors to clip a couple of stray hairs. With a dose of OCD that would curl the nose of even Howie Mandel, the Contrarian man’s up to the occasion when he must expose his jugular eyebrow, to the ever aging and shaking hands of his wife, the “Butcher of Troy.”

Within moments as I snip away, he is screaming like a girl, “I heard that, I HEARD that, you hit the spoon with the scissors! Be CAREFUL!” I nod, and shake my head, roll my eyes, and comfort him like a child getting his first cavity filled, “There there now, relax, we’re almost done.” Welcome to my world.

***

No post tomorrow since we are shopping. None yesterday since I was in town on Church stuff all day and evening.