What makes a European hero, asks Rosita Boland, in response to avery American view presented in Time magazine this week
'Hero" is a word that has lost much of its original meaning; the top characteristic of one, in dictionaries at least, is "exceptional courage". But our physical courage is rarely tested these days, when so much of our activity is cerebral. The wolves to be kept from the doors these days arrive in the form of the taxman and the bank official. Whether to bungee jump off a bridge or not is about as far as most of us get these days with an adrenalin rush. Those whose physical courage and nerve is constantly tested - such as lifeboat volunteers, firemen, and soldiers - are rightly respected, yet rarely famous. Unless, of course, it's wartime and you're a soldier.
This week, Time magazine's cover story was called "European Heroes", with the breathy sub-heading: "36 amazing people; whether famous or unsung, they inspire, provoke and make a difference."
Within, there were profiles of the chosen 36, among them three Irish people: Bono of U2, Christina Noble, who established a children's foundation in Vietnam, and peace activist Caoimhe Butterly. The introduction to the Time profiles opens with the proclamation "war breeds heroes - and a deep need to anoint them", thus predictably nailing its patriotic colours to the masthead.
It was a mixed bag of a story and appears to reflect a very American view of what makes a hero on this side of the Atlantic. For a start, they stretched the geographical boundaries to include Africa and the Middle East.
The 36 people featured were whittled down from an initial list of 100, which had been selected by Time correspondents and staff in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The inclusion of a representative of that most American of all US sports, NBA star basketball player Dikembe Mutombo, who is actually from . . . the Congo, and who lives, er, in the US, suggests at least a little American bias.
Time manages to gloss over the extension of geographical boundaries to a whole new continent by slipping in a reference (in brackets) to the magazine's distribution and circulation, which indicates, basically, that the reasons for juggling with geography are all down to money: "For this special issue, a celebration of 36 extraordinary heroes, Time has taken the broad view (including geographically; because this edition is published throughout Africa and the Middle East, we've chosen African and Middle Eastern heroes along with European ones)."
Yet, the story is flagged on the cover as "European Heroes".
So what does Time think constitutes a European hero or heroine? Cast your mind to the contestants' answers at Miss World competitions over the years and that covers quite a lot of ground: working with disadvantaged children and animals. Hence wine-maker Yiannis Boutaris, from Greece, who is feted for setting up a sanctuary at Nymfaio for dancing bears - all 13 of them. And Hanna and Magdalena Graaf, Swedish pop-star model sisters, beloved of the tabloids, who have founded a 50-bed children's centre in India.
Danish writer Peter Hoeg, we learn, "enjoys great success as a writer. But he's even more successful as a human being". This is because Hoeg has donated all profits from his little-known novel, The Woman and the Ape, to, er, "women and children in the developing world".
Anyway, to qualify these days for the American version of the European hero/heroine template, it would appear you really need to be either rich, talented and famous, like Bono, David Beckham, Jamie Oliver and J.K. Rowling, or have a publicity-happy social conscience (although it certainly helps if you're rich with it, as is "corporate titan" Frenchman Claude Bebear, director of the global AXA insurance firm, who has recently made a point of recruiting some employees from "banlieues - the blighted housing projects that ring most French cities").
The top choice of readers in response to the question "who is your European hero?" wasn't included in the 36. Not surprisingly, perhaps, as it was French president Jacques Chirac, that vehement opponent of the war in Iraq, who got the most nominations during a two-month poll on the Time Europe website.
In these post-Iraq war days, the magazine's editorial ends with: "After all, heroism is contagious. Just ask around."
Well, SARS is definitely contagious, and so is hysteria. Europe, particularly France, may have been reluctant to join in the recent battle-cries of support for the invasion of Iraq, but lest we feel left out of the anoint-the-heroes home- coming frenzy, Time has given us our very own mix-n-match list to cheer us up.