forest for six days until he was rescued, under what conceivable definition does this fine young man’s effort to survive qualify as the conduct of a hero? Yet he was treated like one by this country and feted by the president at the White House.
When Captain O’Grady, eschewing the hero status he had suddenly achieved, told a gaggle of reporters that “all I was was a scared little bunny rabbit, trying to survive,” the media would have none of it. What did the pilot know? We know a hero when we see one, they said to themselves. “An American hero came home to an emotional Main Street welcome,” the
Los Angeles Times
and other papers gushed. “He is an American hero,” President Clinton proclaimed.
Time, Newsweek
, and
U.S. News and World Report
all had cover stories on the incident. “One Amazing Kid” and “The Right Stuff,”
U.S. News
and
Newsweek
trumpeted on their covers.
But a hero, I always thought, was someone who had risked his life to help another. The four American helicopter pilots and their crews who flew into enemy territory and withstood deadly enemy ground fire to rescue Captain O’Grady were the real heroes in this piece, but hardly a word was said about them.
Most of the Simpson jurors, of course, knew about the “Dream Team” before they were selected to serve, and undoubtedly continued to hear of this nonsense through conjugal visits and, as I’ve suggested, osmosis. And consciously or unconsciously, people want to be on the side of the celebrity, the side of glamour. That’s just the way it is.
There’s another related but more subtle phenomenon at play here, and it’s that usually, people see what they expect to see or want to see, not what they are actually seeing. I believe it was Thoreau who spoke of the endless struggle to see what is right in front of our eyes. I don’t think I’m a particularly bright individual, but there are two qualities I long ago learned I did possess. One is the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff and see through to the core of a problem, usually very quickly. The second related quality (one which I have found is even more rare, and again has nothing to do with intelligence) is that when I read, see, or hear anything, for some reason I am totally uninfluenced by what has previously been said or written about the subject. I am able to form impressions simply on the basis of what I see taking place in front of me.
Here is just one example among a great many that come to mind. President Reagan has been called the great communicator, but the first time I heard him being interviewed years ago, it was immediately obvious to me he was not a good extemporaneous speaker, and that he was an effective communicator only when he was reading his lines from a TelePrompTer. His staff, of course, knew this, and this is the precise reason they kept presidential press conferences down to an absolute minimum, shielding him, whenever possible, from having to answer reporters’ questions. I picked up on the difference between Reagan speaking without a TelePrompTer and
with
one within a few minutes of the first time I saw him interviewed. What I had heard and read previously about Reagan’s supposedly superb oratorical skills meant absolutely nothing to me, having no influence on the opinion I formed about whether he was or was not an effective speaker and communicator. Yet the fact (it’s not an opinion) that Reagan without a TelePrompTer was not a good communicator was lost on millions of people, including columnists and the media, for many years. It has only been in recent years that it has become much better known.
In Reagan’s first debate with President Carter, Reagan was inarticulate and unknowledgeable. Moreover, he squirmed a lot and appeared nervous. In fact, there were moments when I felt embarrassed for him, as we all do when someone performing before us is not doing well. Carter, on the other hand, was organized, articulate, and very
When Captain O’Grady, eschewing the hero status he had suddenly achieved, told a gaggle of reporters that “all I was was a scared little bunny rabbit, trying to survive,” the media would have none of it. What did the pilot know? We know a hero when we see one, they said to themselves. “An American hero came home to an emotional Main Street welcome,” the
Los Angeles Times
and other papers gushed. “He is an American hero,” President Clinton proclaimed.
Time, Newsweek
, and
U.S. News and World Report
all had cover stories on the incident. “One Amazing Kid” and “The Right Stuff,”
U.S. News
and
Newsweek
trumpeted on their covers.
But a hero, I always thought, was someone who had risked his life to help another. The four American helicopter pilots and their crews who flew into enemy territory and withstood deadly enemy ground fire to rescue Captain O’Grady were the real heroes in this piece, but hardly a word was said about them.
Most of the Simpson jurors, of course, knew about the “Dream Team” before they were selected to serve, and undoubtedly continued to hear of this nonsense through conjugal visits and, as I’ve suggested, osmosis. And consciously or unconsciously, people want to be on the side of the celebrity, the side of glamour. That’s just the way it is.
There’s another related but more subtle phenomenon at play here, and it’s that usually, people see what they expect to see or want to see, not what they are actually seeing. I believe it was Thoreau who spoke of the endless struggle to see what is right in front of our eyes. I don’t think I’m a particularly bright individual, but there are two qualities I long ago learned I did possess. One is the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff and see through to the core of a problem, usually very quickly. The second related quality (one which I have found is even more rare, and again has nothing to do with intelligence) is that when I read, see, or hear anything, for some reason I am totally uninfluenced by what has previously been said or written about the subject. I am able to form impressions simply on the basis of what I see taking place in front of me.
Here is just one example among a great many that come to mind. President Reagan has been called the great communicator, but the first time I heard him being interviewed years ago, it was immediately obvious to me he was not a good extemporaneous speaker, and that he was an effective communicator only when he was reading his lines from a TelePrompTer. His staff, of course, knew this, and this is the precise reason they kept presidential press conferences down to an absolute minimum, shielding him, whenever possible, from having to answer reporters’ questions. I picked up on the difference between Reagan speaking without a TelePrompTer and
with
one within a few minutes of the first time I saw him interviewed. What I had heard and read previously about Reagan’s supposedly superb oratorical skills meant absolutely nothing to me, having no influence on the opinion I formed about whether he was or was not an effective speaker and communicator. Yet the fact (it’s not an opinion) that Reagan without a TelePrompTer was not a good communicator was lost on millions of people, including columnists and the media, for many years. It has only been in recent years that it has become much better known.
In Reagan’s first debate with President Carter, Reagan was inarticulate and unknowledgeable. Moreover, he squirmed a lot and appeared nervous. In fact, there were moments when I felt embarrassed for him, as we all do when someone performing before us is not doing well. Carter, on the other hand, was organized, articulate, and very
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