Where did our heroes go?

Being Frank, by Frank Ameduri

You can tell a lot about a culture by the people it celebrates. Our heroes have always been a measure of our values and of our perception of ourselves as a people.

Heroes are always people who at least appear to personify current societal values. When I was a kid, honesty, bravery and intelligence were in vogue. Some of my heroes were historical figures -- Lincoln, Washington, Columbus and the like. Some of my modern heroes came from the world of sports, like Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, Kareem, Magic and so on. My favorite heroes for many years were the astronauts of the Gemini and Apollo programs. Jacques Cousteau was a hero of mine.

When we rooted for people in the movies, it was always the guys in the white hats. We wanted to be like the good guys. Things have changed.

Somewhere along the line, the anti-hero become an American icon. I'll admit that I liked Clint Eastwood movies as much as the next kid. In all honesty, though, even the roguish man-with-no-name characters of Spaghetti Western fame were generally guys who tended to follow the moral compass in the right direction … though their methods weren't always the most ethical.

Today's heroes are different. Kids root for athletes who make more headlines for their off-court or off-field shenanigans than for their athletic accomplishments -- or their community service. Kids mimic rappers and other musicians who tout violence and hatred as valid responses to society's difficulties.

What is perhaps the most interesting trend is that the media have switched their approach to famous, and infamous, people. It seems there was once an invisible line drawn by the media's own sense of decorum -- a sort of governor on the accelerator pedal of sensationalism. Kids of the '20s knew that Babe Ruth was a great hitter, a strong competitor and a generally warm and approachable man. He would stay for hours after a game to talk with kids and sign autographs, and that was no secret. For the most part, kids did not know that Ruth was a man of excess … with food, liquor and for a time with women. Members of the press knew those things about Ruth, but they somehow decided that his heroic persona was the one that belonged in the headlines. It could be argued that those journalists were guilty of telling an incomplete, or perhaps even inaccurate, story. It could also be argued that their sensibilities told them that the part of Ruth that belonged in the public domain was the part he chose to give to the public -- the baseball part. That part of Ruth was a worthy hero.

Our society has become preoccupied with the other side. Many of today's heroes are villains, and their anti-social behavior is celebrated as a sign of strength and toughness. We revel in seamy stories, and the media respond by digging up more and more of them. We spent six of the eight years of the Clinton administration mesmerized by the president's ill-advised sexual antics. The question that begs to be asked is, when did that become critical information? Whether you like President Clinton or not is not even the issue. The issue is that, despite the glaring spotlight on his personal life, he continued to perform the duties of the presidency. The question is, what benefit was gained by the intense scrutiny of the president's personal life? We now know that many past presidents were guilty of similar behavior, but that part of their lives was considered off-limits to the media -- and even to their political enemies, who probably paid attention to the adage about people in glass houses.

It's important to remember that heroes are almost always what we make them -- they are almost always symbolic representations of our ideal selves. Fans were not transfixed by the reality of Dennis Rodman, because fans never knew Rodman's real self. We came to know the image he portrayed, and the media fed that image until it consumed the man and turned him into a caricature of himself.

Of course, the same can be said of heroes who are celebrated for their positive images. The image the astronauts I idolized projected was that of intelligent and responsible adventurers. They were clean-cut pilots who trained and worked hard, and who's bravery enabled them to be frontiersmen for a modern era.

The truth about many of them is that they sometimes drank hard, and many of them were selfish and immature thrill-seekers. The truth is that they were human. The function of heroes is not to show us what we are, though. The function of heroes is to show us what we might become if we could live up to our values. It would be nice if we could pick some heroes worthy of aspiration again.

Frank Ameduri is managing editor of Frontiersman.