[lit-ideas] Re: Follow Up to Fly in the Fly-Bottle

DR:

I'm wondering if I have any such remaining allegiances.

Do others?
Linus Pauling: "Young people should always listen to their elders, but not necessarily believe what they say."
I was annoyed by the media incessantly calling Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot of U S Airways plane that ditched into the Hudson, a hero. He was no hero. He was a wonderfully competent pilot and everyone is enormously grateful for that, but he was not a hero. A hero is someone who voluntarily risks his life or limb or place-in-the-world to help or safe someone else. Sullenberger had no choice in the matter. It doesn't diminish the value of what he accomplished to say he was not a hero. It does diminish the meaning of "hero" to use it in situations that don't warrant the term.
I know of one hero, a teacher who tried to stop an attack by a gang of high school boys on another boy. The teacher got cut up pretty bad, but he probably saved the kid's life. I can't even remember my hero's name. We taught at the same school 38 years ago. I doubt I would have had the courage to step into that situation. I have no idea what I would have done. He probably didn't either at the time.
Other than that guy I can't remember having personally come across any heroes. There are several people I admire -- social activists mostly (imagine that!) and some artsy-fartsy rebels, not much at stake there though. 

Mike Geary
Memphis
----- Original Message ----- From: "David Ritchie" <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 1:44 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Follow Up to Fly in the Fly-Bottle
I was wondering why I wrote what I wrote. It came to me that the adoption of heroes is not something I understand well. In the old days the choice of heroes was a limited one--choose among the locals. Now we are told that we live in a media-rich culture--what a term--and that, far from the green valleys in which we once hacked coal or made sho-fly art, we are now at the mercy of media. At the same time, we learn that the media's powers are Lear-like, and we're not talking jets. 

So, heroes.

Was Popper a hero, and for whom?

I'm wondering how Donal came to be a supporter of said person and why?

I'm wondering if I have any such remaining allegiances.

Do others?

David Ritchie,
coming to terms on a Pendleton blanket, with awkward questions in
Portland, Oregon
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