Issue date: 5/5/09 Section: Opinion

We don't want one of us to be the home run king. We want a hero. We want Hank Aaron, the man who had to contend with racism as well as the opposing team. We want Babe Ruth, a man whose power was so consuming he actually called his shot in a World Series game. We don't want fallible people. We want super humans.

Walt Disney was a fixture in American media for close to 50 years. He spent his Sunday nights in people's living rooms telling them about Disneyland and Disney World. Who cares if he was a racist and participated in the McCarthy communist witch trials? He made people happy, and that was enough.

Now, I am not advocating the abolition of investigative reporting, but I think it should be done with much more care and caution. Certain things probably deserve to be overlooked. No one was up in arms when Joe DiMaggio and President Kennedy were fooling around with Marilyn Monroe. Mickey Mantle did more damage to his liver during his baseball career than the most hard-core college student could ever dream of doing. But, back then, it didn't matter.

Granted, calling celebrities and athletes "heroes" is certainly a false label, but maybe that's OK right now. Everything else around us kind of sucks; maybe what we really need is a hero.



- opinion@thedepauw.com

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