I Has a New Hero

Hero. That's a word that gets bandied about quite a bit in today's corn-syrup-flavoured, 98% fat-free society. It seems these days the "hero" label gets stamped on just about anyone whose mug has crossed the TV screen, no matter how crass and undeserving.

You have the "sporting hero", which, if my credulity were chewing gum, would stretch about 4 city blocks. You got your Reality TV "hero", the big fat pansy who sits on his lard arse bawling his eyes out, and the whole nation gives a collective "awwwww" at this pitiful lump of blubbering lameness. You got your "police" and "firefighting" hero which, IMHO, is one of the few groups deserving of the title. Then you got your sick kid "hero"; now, much as I hate seeing kids in distress, having a horrible disease or having one's busted legs reset does not make one a hero. The doctor who save the child's life is the hero.

When I was a kid things were a lot simpler. My heroes were of the fairly stock kind. Tall stong men who went among us, capes billowing and locks flowing, going about whooping ass for the common good. There was Batman and Superman, naturally. When I got a bit older my heroes became more human but no less brave and kickass: the guys from Battlestar Galactica, and the A-team, and V (the series). And, of course, there was the indefatigable Harry Callahan.

But cruel time marches inexorably onward. Batman was revealed to be naught but a laughably camp parody from a psychedelic era. Superman was felled by a plot more dastardly than any supervillain could concoct; he was re-imagined into a SNAG, a poofy shadow of his former daunting self. The other rawhide characters all grew old and feeble, now pitiful aged men robbed of their virility and gumption. Peppard and Greene bought the respective farms. Even the timeless Eastwood looks out of place without a Zimmer frame.

And so, inescapably, the rosy glasses of youth have faded to a jaded pallor. The whimsical joy of a child has grown into an adult's cynicism.

But I still have my heroes. They have simply morphed into what society would label the "unorthodox" kind. Fewer in number and with dark hearts and purposes though they may be, they still inspire me to keep slogging through the muddy slough which is life. So without further ado, I present to you my most recently acquired hero:

Drinking with Bob

Drinking with Bob, aka Bob Thompson, is a man on a mission. And that mission is to right the braindead wrongs of the world, or the US at least, with shouting. Yes he is one of these knobs who sits and has a rant in front of a video camera and posts it on youtube. The difference is, Bob is actually good. I invite you to view a couple of his pearls here:





(I dunno about you's, but I'm always knackered after watching one of Bob's diatribes :)

Anyhow I doff my hat to you Bob; you are the paragon of candidness and petulance. You sit proudly atop the highest perch of crankiness, up to which I can but look in awe. You are not afraid to call it like it is. You are one of the few Western males to still posses testicles, a deft and wiley individual who refuses to lie down and be crushed by the dreaded PC monster.

Yay Bob!