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“Hero”
Let’s all agree to reconsider our collective use the word “hero,” at least until we can come to some sort of consensus about what the word means. And yes, CNN, I’m also talking to you. I remember a few years ago you did a piece on a elementary schoolteacher who, after one of her students was accidentally stabbed by another, had enough common sense not to pull out the pair of scissors protruding from the poor girl’s abdomen.
Don’t get me wrong, it made for an exemplary human interest story (a k a the meat and potatoes that makes CNN viewers salivary glands run), but this woman wasn’t a hero. She was faced an emergency and made a decision. If she had instead chosen to remove the scissors, we wouldn’t have gone around castigating her for some great moral failing, she would have simply made a mistake. In fact, her heroism is based on merely maintaining the status quo: she chose to do nothing until help arrived. Moreover, she confronted a freak accident, not an existential conflict.
That’s not to say there aren’t heroes.
Take, for instance, Jimmy Weekley, a 70-year-old West Virginian whose house is situated next to a large coal mining project, which has since been stalled by the EPA under the Obama administration. Weekley been suing the developers of the project, Arch Coal, since 1998. While all of his neighbors have left, his litigation continues over a decade later despite having lost his wife, seeing his town all but disappear, and being offered “close to $2 million for his eight acres.” One lone man fighting an industry worth hundreds of millions annually to his state is a real-life David versus Goliath for the fossil-fuel age.
Or perhaps, a more recognizable name, Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City. Last week, he gave a speech defending the Islamic community center and mosque to be built two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center. He told the audience, “We do not honor their lives by denying the very Constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights—and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.” While Bloomberg was advised to quietly navigate the political divide until the heat dissipated, he didn’t. He risked the ire of a good share of his constituency to fight on behalf of a much-maligned and misunderstood minority over an issue he ultimately has no control over.
I propose a hero choses personal sacrifice over betrayal of their principles. In which case, it’s comforting to know a few are still around.
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