Heroes?

The last few weeks, I’ve been watching the TV show Heroes (on DVD) with my son Nicholas.

The premise of the show is that normal people discover that they have super-powers…and a destiny to save the world.

It’s charming, exciting – great entertainment – and I think the show reveals a lot about our hunger for saviors.

For better or worse, the last few years, Americans have seen a lot of our heroes unmasked.

After 9/11, the CIA was touted as a batch of James Bond (or maybe Jack Bauer) types.

But they got it entirely wrong about the Soviet Union, and then bungled the intelligence on Iraq.

President Bush’s war council looked like rocket scientists during the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but proved to have feet of clay.

Even our collective fantasies about America’s armed services have been shaken, by skyrocketing rates of PTSD and soldier-suicides.

And those Masters of the Universe on Wall Street? I’ve been watching today, as they were grilled by Congress.

“How can you justify paying bonuses to managers who are running the company into the ground?” asked NY Rep. Carolyn Maloney.

Yikes. There’s a bumper crop of disillusionment out there.

The latest hero we’ve hoisted onto the pedestal seems to be President Barack Obama.
But events of the last two weeks show that he too is mortal.

Which means that we better brace ourselves. Without a Superman to lift this economy over the chasm, all of us “muggles” could face some tough days ahead.