In times of crisis, great nations have always turned to folk heroes, be it Samson, Robin Hood, Joan of Arc or William Tell.
Well, America is certainly in a time
of crisis, and a bona fide folk hero would be handy just now. At a
moment when the president is perceived to be unfocused and ineffectual,
both houses of Congress are universally despised, our business leaders
are mistrusted and loathed, and our cultural icons are invisible or
clownish, we could really use a Davy Crockett, an Annie Oakley, a Johnny
Appleseed, a John Henry.(click below to read more)
Down through our history, whenever
things got ugly, an inspirational folk hero has always come to the fore.
At the dawn of the Republic, they came in bunches: Paul Revere, Nathan
Hale, Molly Pitcher, Betsy Ross, and my personal favorite, the Swamp
Fox. They appeared out of nowhere, came in all shapes, sizes, races and
genders, and trod all walks of life.
The one thing they had in common was
the ability to rally the troops in the darkest times. Some were pioneers
(Daniel Boone, Kit Carson), some were insurgents (Geronimo, John
Brown), some were athletes (Jack Dempsey, Jack Johnson), some were
entertainers (Woody Guthrie, Will Rogers), some were crooks (Pretty Boy
Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde) and some were colorful psychopaths (Jesse
James, John Dillinger).
They were all larger than life:
indomitable, inspirational sorts whose daunting exploits and overall vim
and panache helped to wrest the nation's eyes away from its seemingly
intractable problems and redirect them toward that shining vision of the
Mansion on the Hill.
Where are our folk heroes today? Where
is our Casey Jones, our Jackie Robinson, our Satchel Paige, our Wyatt
Earp? Where is our Wild Bill Hickok, our Joe Hill, our Cochise, our
Calamity Jane? Where, for that matter, is our Babe Ruth?
The last time I can remember a genuine
folk hero, a legend in his own time, making any noise around here was
back in the heyday of Lee Iacocca, a man who shot from the hip and dared
to speak truth to power. Though Mr. Iacocca was later exposed as a
complete phony, just another auto tycoon lapping at the public trough,
at least he had a folksy quality to him. (Or maybe it was just his
"co-writer," who also helped the Mayflower Madam assemble her book.) The
way I see it, when the chips are down, if you can't have a bona fide
folk hero, a bogus one will do.
What this country really needs today
is somebody like Harry Truman, a tough-talking, straight-shooting hombre
who people can rally around because he's lived so long that even those
who hated him when he was president have let bygones be bygones, vastly
preferring him to the bozos running the country today. But I'm not
seeing anyone like Harry Truman out there today, not in Texas, not in
Chappaqua, and certainly not in Plains, Ga.
Ask yourself: What's the closest we
have to a blue-chip folk hero in this country right now? Geraldo? Whoopi
Goldberg? Lady Gaga? Colbert? Oprah? The last one I can think of was
the USAirways pilot who landed that plane in the East River. But a guy
who makes an emergency landing of a defective plane doesn't quite fit
our iconographic parameters at the present moment. This society is a
defective plane.
It is true that our folk heroes'
exploits are sometimes exaggerated; Davy Crockett almost certainly did
not kill himself a bear when he was only 3. It is also true that some of
our folk heroes were of suspect moral character (Doc Holliday, Billy
the Kid, basically everybody in the Old West with the possible exception
of Crazy Horse and Annie Oakley).
But in times as desperate as these,
beggars can't be choosers. The Golden Age of Johnny Cash, the Man in
Black, is gone. For that matter, so is the Golden Age of Frank Perdue
and Orville Redenbacher.
If the closest we can get to a real
live folk hero today is a Betty White or a George Foreman, that's good
enough for me. Frankly, things being the way they are today, I'd settle
for the guy in the Ford commercial. I'd settle for Cher. I'd settle for
Charlie Sheen. I'd settle for somebody masquerading as Betty Crocker.
Any port in a storm. And believe me, this is a storm.
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