It Doesn’t Pay to Break the Code of Heroism

It’s tough to be a hero these days.

You’re a 19-year-old college student sitting in your Greek history class one morning before Christmas. A 26-year-old man saunters into class, removes a rifle from a black bag and for the next 2 1/2 hours, holds you and your 36 classmates hostage. It becomes clear that the gunman is not operating on all cylinders: He claims the government has implanted a computer chip in his brain. He demands to speak with the President, with the governor of New York.

Then, in an act that precipitates the end of the nightmare, the gunman menaces you with his rifle. He is five feet away and you are his target. So you follow your instincts to live. You rush the lunatic, you are gravely wounded in the struggle and the hostage drama ends with no loss of life.

Your actions, say the authorities, prevented a potential blood bath.

Your courage is hailed far and wide as a hero. A medal of honor is bestowed upon you by officials in your hometown. Grateful university administrators offer to pay the part of your medical bills not covered by insurance, and your tuition as well. A famous socialite from a nearby town writes you a check for $10,000. You are a hero, she tells the media, you can spend it however you like.

The media (and everyone else) agree.

Until three weeks later, when you announce plans to file a $20-million lawsuit against the state, and suddenly, you’re a bum.

*

Our beleaguered hero, Jason McEnaney of Hicksville, N.Y., has insisted all along that he acted out of a sense of self-preservation: “I knew he planned to make me his target,” McEnaney told his hometown newspaper. “Some people freeze, some people dart away. I attacked.” (This is in keeping with the heroic nature of the act. Modesty, as we shall see, is a requisite component of heroism.)

McEnaney is convalescing from his wounds, which required extensive surgery and skin grafts. He has taken a leave of absence from school, the State University of New York at Albany. His attorney says he has a strong case because the gunman, also a student, was known to university police as mentally unbalanced and potentially dangerous. Teachers and others, the attorney maintains, should have been warned.

But because McEnaney has become an object of derision and threats by listeners of a radio talk show whose host has taken the position that a hero should not sue, McEnaney may transfer to another school. The attorney says McEnaney’s hero status was unquestioned until the radio host began whipping up public sentiment against him.

“After this guy called Jason a scumbag on radio, I got two crank calls,” says the attorney, Neil Shayne. “Jason and his mother got disturbing calls. The worst part is Jason was shot by some lunatic, and here is a guy who is inciting people! This shock jock has encouraged people to write Jason letters, and he actually brought me mail yesterday, mail criticizing Jason, about how he is an ungrateful rat. Jason doesn’t understand it. It is really upsetting him.”

Actually, in the proper light, the controversy is easily fathomed. Unwittingly, McEnaney has broken some rigid cultural rules governing heroism.

To some, these transgressions are unforgivable.

*

Americans strongly support redress for those who have been truly wronged. Ordinarily, the device used to accomplish this objective is the lawsuit. We applaud when the day is won by whistle-blowers, by victims of corporate greed or governmental intrusion.

But a more complicated reaction comes into play following acts of courage by unknown individuals.

“It’s one thing when a known hero performs well, as in the Super Bowl, but quite another when someone who is totally unknown rises to the occasion,” says Alan Dundes, a professor of folklore and anthropology at UC Berkeley who has studied heroism. “(McEnaney) conformed to the pattern of the obscure person coming out of nowhere to assume the hero’s mantle.”

We love that.

But according to Dundes, McEnaney has compromised his hero status in two ways. First, he accepted money from Mary Lou Whitney, the socialite. Second, he plans to sue for a ridiculous amount of money.

We hate that.

“Acts of heroism are not supposed to be rewarded, and heroes are supposed to be modest,” Dundes says. “Usually in the Westerns, the heroes spurn the reward and ride away. (McEnaney) has violated the heroic code by taking that $10,000. He should have donated it to charity or offered it to the school for improved security. So for him to sue is a double whammy. He already accepted money when he shouldn’t have, and now he is going after it.”

People find this objectionable, Dundes says, “because he is, in effect, undoing his valorous deed by trying to cash in on it.”

But what if McEnaney’s act had led to disaster? What if students had gotten wounded or killed when he rushed the gunman?

“Then,” Dundes says, “maybe he would have gotten sued for not sitting quietly.”

Terrible. And terribly plausible. No wonder heroes are so hard to find.

* Robin Abcarian’s column is published Wednesdays and Sundays.