the 'h' word | 2002-07-29 - 11:18 p.m.


If there's one thing I hate m�s than those Subway commercials where the sarcastic dude plays mind games on gullible young fast food empleados, it's the word hero. I mean, the palabra gets passed around so much these days, it's a wonder it has retenido any meaning at all. Hoy d�a, everyone's a hero, either by virtue of doing their job, or simplemente by not letting other people die. If you're American, you're practicamente garantizado to be a hero as long as you don't defect to Iraq.

When I heard about the desafortunados that got trapped in that Pennsylvania mine la semana pasada, the first thing that popped into my head was, "Oh, mierda. Here we go. The media is going to use the word 'hero' again." Not for a segundo did I entertain the esperanza that the media might hunt for a more suitable word to describir the poor, trapped miners. Like victimized. Or screwed. No, I knew with sickening certainty that I would be hearing the 'H' word many, many, many times in the days to come. The only cuestion was how soon.

I didn't have long to wait. Only a few horas after learning the miners had been rescued, I saw the dreaded 'hero' palabra appear in a newspaper article on the front page of my morning paper. Twice. The primera vez, in a quote from a miner who claimed that his trapped colleagues had saved his life by shouting at him to run for safety. "They are the heroes," the miner said. "If not for them, there'd be dead bodies."

The segunda vez, in a paragraph about the rescuers. "(They) were ... heroes, too," read the paragraph. "Experts in drilling deep holes and scientists who imagined the conditions deep inside the mine theorized what it would take to save the miners. In almost every instance, the rescuers turned out to be right."

Call me a crank, but since when is doing your job right heroism? And exactamente how many heroes can we have here?

Well, how about a whole nation of them? According to some idiota at the Detroit Free Press, we can have miliones de heroes if we want. Because we, the spectators, in watching and praying for the seguridad of the miners, are heroes, too. Yes, we are! "We forget what a community of ordinary Americans can do, when the stakes are high enough and quitting is not an option. We underestimate the power of teamwork, whether the team consists of nine men huddling together in the dark, or hundreds of rescue workers swarming above them or millions of pajama-clad viewers cheering them on. "

Aiii! As my T�a Dolores would say, what a load of esti�rcol! If we are to believe what we read and hear, pr�cticamente the only party in this news story who is not acting heroically is the media itself.

That, por lo menos, I agree with.

anterior - siguiente

pride and prejudice - 2004-09-07
wherein I become a Yahoo! Search Result - 2004-06-23
like 9-11 all over again - 2004-06-20
enough said - 2003-02-05
tirar por la calle de en medio - 2003-01-28

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