Some Heroes More Equal Than Others

When is a hero a hero?

It’s a time for exalted returns, not only of John Glenn, but also the middle-aged bikers of “CHiPS” in a recent movie on TNT, and that old spacenik, Walter Cronkite, who’s helping CNN track the heavenly trail of Discovery.

Clearly, it’s an endeavor of love for cosmos-minded Cronkite, who may even wear a space helmet to bed. The former CBS News anchor believes he knows a celestial body when he sees one. In this case, the streaking glow is Glenn, who has become not only the oldest man in space, but also the most interviewed, the most watched and the most fawned over.

Cronkite soldered Glenn to his pedestal when he said on TV recently that America needed a hero right now, and that the Democratic senator from Ohio, age 77, was the perfect ticket.

Just why remains undocumented, especially given how many have questioned the scientific validity of Glenn being on this flight, and charged that letting him soar again, as he did 36 years ago, was nothing more than a reward for past service in space and in the U.S. Senate.

Besides, we already have someone to worship. Or can’t the late Princess Diana be our imported national treasure anymore? And have we closed the hatch already on October’s points of light, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa?

They’re a nice crowd. More suited to a halo than any of them, however, is Jerrie Cobb, the 67-year-old pilot and almost-astronaut who, with other women, got bounced from the space program in 1962 when Congress decided, and Glenn agreed, that women should leave the flying to men (Glenn then called it “the natural order”). Cobb, who still wants her shot in space, got some press recently, but only on the coattails of Glenn’s ride on Discovery.

For much of the last three decades, she has been living obscurely among and ferrying medicine and other supplies to poor, primitive peoples in the Amazon rain forest, the empowering message of her life being that a single individual can make a difference.

Not a bad candidate for adulation.

Yet not one with quite the wattage likely to earn major heroizing from TV.

In that category, as well, are the rescue workers operating anonymously in Central America in the devastating wake of Hurricane Mitch. And also the heroes you and I know who perform epic deeds quietly and far from the spotlight. One in my neighborhood is George Annino. Working guy. Never been a senator. Never been in space. Yet he flies like Discovery about this time of year when collecting food for holiday baskets that he delivers to the needy. And then there’s Carol Olson, a woman nearby who takes in and cares for stray cats that otherwise may end up euthanized.

Heroes Prove Tough to Sell

Some heroes do get acknowledged by TV, most recently those from Doctors Without Borders. That’s the nonprofit relief agency cited on KCET’s “Life & Times” at 7 tonight and Thursday in a first-rate report from famine-scarred southern Sudan by Saul Gonzalez. Just as KTTV’s Christina Gonzalez did for her recent reports from the same region, Saul Gonzalez used vacation time to cover this story, and with fine results, showing how the group’s health care workers offer glints of hope for those malnourished Sudanese children whose skeletal bodies and swollen bellies signal their plight.

But heroes are still a tough sell in the TV industry, says Craig Serling, a 34-year-old writer, editor and independent producer. Serling should know. It was three years ago when he and his associate, Roland Seeman, began pitching a terrific concept for a weekly series titled “American Heroes,” making the rounds of networks, production companies and distributors with his pilot. I mentioned their efforts in a 1995 column.

The concept? “No schmaltz or sugary panhandling,” Serling vows. Instead the hub story of each half-hour would look in-depth at an individual or group tackling a long-term problem. Supporting components would include a profile of someone on a dangerous assignment, a flashback to a “classic moment” of U.S. history, a home video segment on a local hero and a few minutes on a celebrity hero.

The response: Zippo.

Since I wrote about it, the pilot ran on KCET, but otherwise “America Heroes” remains just a gleam in Serling’s eye and an enriching series waiting to happen.

“I thought I knew what a hero was,” said Serling this week. “I thought Diane Paul, who left Baltimore to set up refugee centers in Bosnia, was a hero.” But Paul and the other unsung heroes affectionately profiled in Serling’s appealing pilot were not glamorous or exciting enough to entice TV’s money people. He and his agent have been told repeatedly his concept is “boring.” Or that, “People don’t care.” Or that, “There’s no room for heroes.”

‘Trying to Fill the Black Hole’

At least not for Serling’s heroes. Like some of us, he wonders about “this wall-to-wall coverage” of Glenn. “I’m sure he’s a great guy,” he said, “but they [CNN and the other 24-hour news networks] are just trying to fill the black hole right now.”

Serling is now on to something else, trying to fund a pilot for “Night Rangers,” his proposed drama series about freelance camera operators who work the wee hours shooting footage for local newscasts. Yet he still believes there’s room for real-life heroes in a series that’s “not a cross between ‘Hard Copy’ and ‘Real TV.’ ”

That hybrid sounds a bit like a prospective “reality-based” heroes series that Worldvision Enterprises hopes to sell in syndication next season mainly as a weeknight companion to newscasts.

“TAC-1: Real Heroes” would tell “compelling stories in which highly trained professional men and women risk their lives daily in the service of others,” with subjects ranging from Navy SEALs to hostage negotiators. You can almost hear the thumping, upbeat music that would accompany them.

In contrast with the quiet heroes who are just too boring.