(Owed to Xaos)

The Olympic Games are apparently coming to Vancouver, and since Seattle - presumably due to its putative moral superiority and boundless smugness - seems to consider itself Canadian, there is some buzz on local TV.  Mostly, there are amateurish spots hyping local athletes who are bound for parts north in 2010.  Inevitably, they are referred to, in climax, as "local heroes".

This is an incredibly debased usage.

I admit that, for example, to become an excellent skier is difficult, and in some limited sense admirable.  It requires hours of diligent practice, improving one's art and refining it, studying all the nuances of skiing.  Of course, one could say the same thing about one who was excellent at skateboarding, horseshoes, cribbage, farting in tune, or serial murder.  Nonetheless, persistence and discipline, though kind of square, are generally conceded as virtues.

But is a life lived in such a focussed way heroic?  These hours spent in single-minded pursuit of skiing, this devotion to the exclusion of the ordinary elements of life like, say, a job, do not so much make for a hero, as... a bum.

Which, I suppose, is passing awesome.  I am always in favor of those who get away with it.  But in the interest of clarity, I say we push for Olympic announcers to introduce the competitors as, say, "an awesome ski bum from Seattle" and save the hero label for dogs that rescue kittens from burning buildings.