I was shocked to look at a copy of U.S. News & World Report the other day with a picture of Jane Fonda on its cover. In the old times, before the new management took over, you would have been more likely to see a cover layout of a bar graph depicting world trade in durable goods, or–if the magazine`s editors felt unusually bold–an actual picture of a durable good. It wasn`t Miss Fonda`s picture that shocked me, however. After all, she has now become a captainess of industry, even if it is the flab removal industry, and she`s certainly a durable good.
What struck me was the cover headline: ”Heroes Are Back.” I had never realized that heroes had gone away. I still have mine, though I must concede that many are now doing commercials for Lite Beer from Miller, if not Polident.
But as I learned reading further, the magazine was not talking about the heroes of those of us who idolized Dick Butkus in the days when he was mashing quarterbacks` skulls instead of beer cans. It was talking about America`s youth.
”Sociologists have noted an absence of heroes in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, when the national psyche was under the sway of Vietnam,” it said. ” `Now, it`s OK to have heroes,` says sociologist Amitai Etzioni of George Washington University. `We`re back to yearning for leadership.` ”
U.S. News backed this up with the results of a Roper Poll survey taken for it among youths 18 through 24 across the nation. The young folk were shown a long list of well-known public figures and asked to choose those
”you find personally inspiring and would . . . hope to be like in some way.” They could write in names of people not on the list.
When Mark Twain said, ”There are lies, damned lies and statistics,” it was before they had invented polls–not to speak of sociologists. But if there`s one thing you can trust about U.S. News, it`s the magazine`s data. I`ve been relying on its bar graphs since I bought my first durable good, which I think was an antique spittoon. My only fault with the poll was that its methodology required that the respondents be able to read and write, which probably eliminated half the population in that age bracket.
Even so, the results were astounding. The top 10 heroes of America`s youth predictably included names that could be lifted from the table of contents of any week`s People magazine: androgynous rock star Michael Jackson (who I think would show up on a list of America`s top 10 ornithologists), not-so androgynous rock star Tina Turner, comedian Eddie Murphy, Oscar-winning actress and Dust Bowl queen Sally Field and genius movie mogul Steven Spielberg.
But it also included Jane Fonda, who is now a maid of 47 summers, and Clint Eastwood, who at 53 should be more at home with the Pat Boone set. I was not surprised to find Pope John Paul II there, as he also makes every list–I think in most cases, quite genuinely–but I was floored to see the name of Ronald Reagan, 74, the hero of all right-thinking, bald-headed Texas land barons, and saintly Mother Teresa, who at 74 looks like most Democrats wish Ronald Reagan looked.
For a fleeting moment, I wondered if we are raising a generation of necrophiliacs. Clint Eastwood spends most of his movies wandering about blowing people`s heads off. Mother Teresa`s principal mission is getting dying people off the streets of India and into hospices. I don`t think it detracts from her toil, sacrifice and saintliness to note that, if you wake up at curbside with Mother Teresa peering down at you, you have a big problem.
But they`re only 2 out of 10. It finally dawned on me what nearly all these people have in common. They`re all rich! The Pope at least controls vast riches, and Mother Teresa could get a seven-figure book contract in a trice if she`d hire Henry Kissinger`s agent.
So that`s what the nation`s young people find ”personally inspiring”– the wealth of Croesus. Everything is back to normal. America is safe.
But, please, let`s not get so carried away we have U.S. News covers with Tina Turner in leather shorts peeking out from the bar graphs. Some of us are old enough to be content with Jane Fonda. Now that she`s mellowed.
