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Of course Mickey Mantle ranked high among my heroes when I was about 10 years old. How could I have escaped? His visage appeared on my cereal box every morning. Throughout the summer, daily newspapers thrilled me with his feats on the diamond -- soaring home runs, leaping catches, timely hits. From the library, I devoured Mantle hagiographies disguised as biographies. I rooted for him all through the summer of 1961, sure that he would come through and pass that upstart Roger Maris in the home-run derby.
But I outgrew that. Sometime around my 16th birthday, it dawned on me that someone could be talented at whacking and catching baseballs without also serving as an Inspiration to American Youth or a Performer of Heroic Deeds.
Judging by the public effusions recently, though, most of America hasn't grown up. All manner of adults, people supposedly capable of serving on juries and signing valid contracts, will soberly announce that Mickey Mantle -- or O.J. Simpson, or Magic Johnson -- was a Real American Hero.
As if that weren't enough to debase the term past any
real meaning, we just endured more public mourning for
another hero,
Jerry Garcia. Just how does a facility
for song-writing and bluesy guitar riffs get transformed
into heroism?
I confess I've been a Rolling Stones fan for about 30 years. But if Keith Richards were found dead tomorrow morning, the only appropriate response would be marveling that he survived so long after so many years of debauchery.
Now, there's nothing wrong with being talented at something, developing that talent, and finding a way to derive a livelihood from that talent. I've tried to do it myself. But it's hardly heroic.
Back when the O.J. proceedings began, Ellen Miller (the Post's Western Slope correspondent, and a columnist in other venues) compiled a list of people whom Westerners might admire for heroism.
Among them were Ralph Carr. A former small-town newspaper editor, he was governor of Colorado in 1942 when the federal government evacuated loyal American citizens from the West Coast and placed them in concentration camps in the interior of the country.
Alone among Western governors, Carr denounced this outrage. He also made sure that these involuntary immigrants were treated as well as possible in Colorado. He also lost his office in the next election. But to stand up for what was honorable and decent, against a tide of bigoted public opinion, at the cost of his political career -- now there's an act of heroism, and Colorado ought to be proud that such a man ever lived in this state.
Another of Ellen's suggestions was Jeannette Rankin. A Montanan, she was the first woman to serve in the U.S. Congress. She was also a pacifist, and vowed never to vote in favor of war.
She voted against America's entry into World War I. She lost the next election. She returned to public life a few years later. She cast the only vote against entering World War II. Not because she thought America had any choice but to go to war with Japan and Germany, but because she had given her word to the voters, and she meant to keep her word -- which ended her political career.
Neither took the easy route. Both were principled, and ought to be held up as good examples.
My own notions of heroism also include people who rise to the occasion, which is why our Civil War is so instructive. Take someone like Josiah Chamberlain, a college professor, and he turns into a courageous and capable field commander on Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg.
Or Ulysses S. Grant, a failure at everything he tried, from real-estate to store-clerking. But while notions of gallantry and chivalry pervaded the military, Grant saw the essence of victory -- lead and steel generally trounce flesh and blood -- and persisted despite rumors and denunciations.
No, he wasn't a very good president, and some command
failures led to the fitting sobriquet of Butcher
Grant.
But when his country needed someone who could
win battles, Grant came through with his brilliant
Vicksburg campaign.
Compared to these stalwarts of the past, modern
heroes
seem like pale imitations. What courage did
Mickey Mantle have to display to show up at the ballpark
with a hangover? What did O.J. Simpson ever do that he
wasn't paid -- and paid quite well -- to do?
Jerry Garcia played music that a lot of people liked, and also hawked his image at every profitable moment with designer ties and almost-name-brand ice cream -- if such blatant commerce and contrived marketing hustles are what the sixties were really about, then Newt Gingrich is right and we ought to eradicate the decade from the national consciousness.
I suspect that the need for heroes is embedded in most human psyches. We all need people to admire, to show us what we might be at our best.
And so it's probably no accident that our schools keep getting worse, especially at teaching history. Real heroes would get in the way of all the profits to be made from the commercial endorsements from fabricated heroes.
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