Do What You Want to the Girl, But Leave ME Alone

Government officials, medical experts, and others are pushing to expedite the approval process for drugs that can treat "superbugs"--those antibiotic-resistant infections spawned in no small part due to the overuse of previous iterations of drugs.  This time, though, government officials are determined to do things right!  They might, for example, forbid using such drugs to treat any but the sickest patients.  That'll work.

Look, I'm a fairly well-educated and, I like to think, rational person.  I understand the concept of "the greater good."  But people will not forego life-saving--or even life-improving--treatment for the sake of abstract notions of long-term benefit--at least if that long-term benefit simply benefits other people.  Sure, my misuse of antibiotics--combined with the misuse of antibiotics by others--will ultimately give rise to an incurable superflu and lead inevitably to a final confrontation between good and evil on the Las Vegas Strip.  But damn it, my tummy hurts!

You all better hope the fate of the world never depends on me.  I mean, you know all those movies where the hero realizes that he must sacrifice himself to save others?  "So, you're saying that, if I voluntarily jump into the volcano, I can appease the gods and they will spare the village?  Yeah, um, sounds great, but what's in it for me?"  If I have to choose between my name living on in glory and my body living on in shame, I'll take corporeal shame every time.

And I'm sure I'm not alone in this.  Yes, many parents would give their lives for their children, but that's about it.  I know plenty of firefighters, police officers, soldiers, and others have died in service to others, and I respect them for it.  But I imagine most of those folks had no particular intention of dying.  Let's face it, altruistic self-sacrifice--especially the sacrifice of one's actual life--is pretty anti-Darwinian (again, except in the case of parents and children).

Harlan Ellison once speculated that what killed the dinosaurs was basically a failure of imagination--an inability to see what was coming: "Gee it's getting chilly out.  Oh, well, what are you going to do? Mmm. . . trilobites!"  Ellison also warned that we--modern humankind--didn't look so hot ourselves.  But I don't think we suffer from a lack of imagination.  We can imagine all too well what will come of our (in)actions.  I suspect we just lack the capacity to care.

Mens Perversa in Corpore Sano

Sunday mornings are for The New York Times, but it's a bit jarring when the first stories one reads feature a steady stream of murder, rape, drug abuse, and robbery sprees.  Even more jarring is the fact that I always begin with the sports section.

I am constantly justifying my enthusiasm for sports, unshared by many in my extended circle of friends and family, many of whom are musical-theatre snobs or pseudo-intellectuals or both.  They look down on sports as the preserve of insufficiently evolved alpha males (and a few alpha females), undeserving of the attention (and certainly the money) lavished upon it.  I counter with an argument that sports (and maybe politics) provide the only dependable sources of actual narrative excitement.  Each game provides a classic plot: beginning, middle, and end.  And whereas movies and television shows, no matter how well done, are fundamentally predictable--except "Breaking Bad," but I digress--sports constantly surprise.  No matter how heavily favored one team is, the games still must be played, and the underdogs occasionally triumph.

So it's depressing when the front page of the Sunday sports pages are dominated by stories of a Kansas City Chiefs linebacker killing himself after shooting his girlfriend to death; of the prevalence of Adderall as a new performance-enhancer of choice among NFL players; of a quartet of Rugers University basketball players busted for a series of dormitory robberies.  In what passes for an "uplifting" story, Kathy Redmond, has devoted her life to combating the culture of sexual abuse that exists among collegiate athletes--a commitment she developed in response to her own rape at the hands of a Nebraska football player in the early 90's.

I'm not likely to abandon an enthusiasm for sports any time soon.  But the constant drumbeat of crime and depravity is disheartening.  True, I'm not a child, and I have no need of athletic heroes to look up to, but wouldn't it be nice to know that at least a FEW of these guys were worthy of such admiration?  That some are blessed with gifts of character to match their obvious physical gifts?

I'm sure some are.  It's sad, though, when reading about, say, Robert Griffin III--by all accounts a delightful human being as well as a spectacular athlete--to find oneself wondering how long it'll be before we discover he's running a child-prostitution ring in Malaysia.  Many times bitten, many times shy.

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Super-Mayor

As the presidential campaign heats up, we can look forward to inevitable photo ops of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama hoisting brewskis and wielding hunting rifles to prove their manly-man bona fides.  With luck, we will avoid a Dukakis-in-a-tank or John-Kerry-windsurfing moment.

They might as well give up, though, because Newark, NJ, mayor Cory Booker has clinched the title of America's Machoest Pol, by carrying a woman out of a burning building.  Let me repeat that: On Thursday, the mayor of Newark, NJ, CARRIED A WOMAN OUT OF A BURNING BUILDING.

While I applaud Mayor Booker's courage, I worry about the precedent.  We can't have our municipal chief executives risking life and limb every time a fire breaks out or a cat needs to be rescued from a tree.  These men (and women) have budget committee meetings to oversee.

More worrisome, though, is the thought that other politicians, competitive by nature, will see Booker's actions as a challenge. But Booker, 42, is probably in better shape than your average politician.

I would hate for New York's Michael Bloomberg to feel that he needs to match his cross-river counterpart rescue for rescue.  It's unnerving enough that Bloomberg frequently pilots his own helicopter all around New York; he may decide to start hunting down drug dealers or battling the Staten Island insurgency to keep up with Booker.

Politicians should stick to doing what they do best: clogging the arteries of the body politic.  Leave the heroics to the heroes.  (Although if Rep. Paul Ryan feels like running into a burning building, more power to him.)
 

Heroes Just Ain't What They Used to Be

When Captain Chesley Sullenberger landed his crippled airplane in the Hudson River a few years back, saving every passenger onboard, he was understandably hailed as a hero.  True, one could argue that the captain was simply doing his job, but he certainly performed admirably under a tremendous amount of pressure.  No one can begrudge him his moment of national adoration, even if it did lead to an unfortunate increase in the number of children named "Chesley."

To get a sense of how heroism has been devalued, we need only look to Italy.

In the wake of the disaster aboard the Costa Concordia cruise ship, a drama has unfolded, casting two central figures in the roles of celebrated hero and reprehensible villain.  The cruise ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, faces public condemnation and possible manslaughter charges for abandoning his post when his ship ran aground (he has claimed that he was actually knocked overboard while overseeing the ship's evacuation).  On the other hand, Coast Guard Captain Gregorio de Falco is receiving Sullenbergerian levels of praise for his actions during the disaster, specifically for ordering Captain Schettino back onto his ship.  His salty phrase, roughly translated as, "Get back on board, Schmuck!" has become a cultural phenomenon in Italy.  T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase are selling like hotcakes--or whatever Italians buy in mass quantities instead of hotcakes. . . olives, maybe?.

Now, if Schettino did in fact abandon ship, he displayed pathetic cowardice.  A captain's duty to go down with his ship--or at least make sure that the passengers and crew are safe before leaving--is a time-honored part of maritime law and tradition.  But while Captain De Falco should be commended for maintaining his composure and doing his job, I fail to see how his actions merit the label "heroic."  It's hardly "heroic" to order someone else to go back into a life-threatening situation.   When a fireman runs into a burning building, he displays tremendous bravery and self-sacrifice; when his commander orders him into the building, he is merely doing his job.

In fairness to Captain De Falco, he himself is dismissing any talk of his own heroism.  Indeed, that may be his most heroic action of all.