The term "hero" is endemically overused these days, and often in absurd ways. Recent news offers us a couple of good examples:
Unhero: Joseph Stack, the nut case who flew his airplane into a building in Texas. It's not surprising, I guess, that his daughter thinks he's a hero -- aren't daddies always heroes to their little girls? Looking past the Oedipal implications of that, though, to call this guy a hero is more than a little misguided. By that measure. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 terrorist actions in the U.S., is also a hero to some. Stack and KSM, heroes together in a political sense, but not otherwise. Real heroism is universally recognized, not just by a coterie of people with a cause.
An interesting sidelight to this event is that the daughter lives in Norway because she gets better medical care there, so the Stack story is a two-edged sword for his "supporters," who appear to dislike paying taxes but believe U.S. healthcare doesn't need fixing.
Hero: David Benke, the teacher at that middle school in Colorado who tackled the fellow who was starting to shoot students. He would have been more of a hero if he'd made sure the shooter happened to crack his head wide open on the edge of a step, but still, Benke fulfills the requirements - an act of courage in the face of danger. Not foolhardy, in this case (he saw that the bolt-action rifle gave him a chance to go for it), yet a brave effort that prevented a bad outcome, and that most bystanders would not have attempted.
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