"hero" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

The screaming. I forgot that too. Anyway, 90 seconds would be plenty of
time for Batman, with or without Robin.

But it is true that except for a teeny number of creeps who half
accidentally do the right thing, real heroes are almost painfully modest
about their deeds.

The meaning of "hero" has deteriorated considerably over many centuries.
Exx:

Achilles > Roland > George Washington > Robert E. Lee > Sergeant York >
anybody brave >  guys who play movie heroes > celebs who don't even do that
> anybody in the military or on a police force > anybody who has a chance
to screw up royally but somehow doesn't > anybody who gets killed by a
madman.

I simplify, of course. But we do have semantic drift here.

JL

On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 2:52 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <
Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      Re: "hero" (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> I hope my "joke" doesn't imply that I think the Explosive Ordnance
> Disposal team weren't brave people.
>
> Somewhere I read that the average lifetime of a deployed EOD tech in
> Viet Nam was counted in months.
>
>
> But to me, a hero's actions have to:
>
> 1.  be active, rather than passive (simply having the bad luck to stand
> in the way of a psychopath's flying bullets, or being in a building that
> gets hit by an airplane, is sad, but not heroic.)
> 2.  involve a conscious choice to face rather than avoid something that
> is dangerous.  The cops who secured the perimeter at Columbine, while
> Klebold and Harris continued to shoot people inside, don't qualify.
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of
> > Jonathan Lighter
> > Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 10:58 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Re: "hero" (UNCLASSIFIED)
> >
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> ----------------------
> > -
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: "hero" (UNCLASSIFIED)
> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> > -
> >
> > Amusing.
> >
> > BTW, I forget to mention, in the theater, the explosion, the smoke,
> the
> > tear gas, the panic, the  blood, and the sight of wounds.
> >
> > Yup, a real man coulda taken the dude down.
> >
> > JL
> >
> > On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 10:53 AM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <
> > Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
> >
> > > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > > -----------------------
> > > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > > Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> > > Subject:      Re: "hero" (UNCLASSIFIED)
> > >
> > >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
> > ---
> > >
> > > Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> > > Caveats: NONE
> > >
> > > >
> > > > The police performed superbly in nabbing the guy in the parking
> lot,
> > > alive,
> > > > and defusing his booby traps before they blew the roof off the
> > > apartment
> > > > house.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Given that booby traps had been defused, would it not have been even
> > > more heroic to _not_ blow the roof off the building?
> > > Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> > > Caveats: NONE
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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