You know, I wrote a long blog about an op-ed piece in the Times and then Blogger lost it(!) So I'll try again. But first, you should read "High Flight" if you haven't already. It's a take on flying from a WWII fighter pilot. It was referenced by Reagan at the funeral of the Challenger astronauts. It was also in an old Bloom County strip parodying Air Force recruitment videos in which the characters pretend to be airplanes. And Opus crashes at the end. It's cute, trust me.

Anyway, the column I wanted to talk about was a Bob Herbert op-ed piece calling the Columbia astronauts the last American heroes. I feel terrible about the explosion and for their families, but isn't this taking revisionist history a bit too far? Herbert credits their courage and idealism, but they aren't the only Americans to exhibit both these qualities. What about the teacher who walks into a classroom in a public high school? Doesn't that take quite a bit of courage and an idealistic view of public education? What about the firefighter who goes into a burning building because he believes that the public good is more important than his own safety? Are these people less courageous or idealistic than shuttle astronauts? This article seemed to trivialize the contributions that these groups of people have made. There's plenty of wonderful things that Herbert could have said about the shuttle astronauts. Why did he have to pick something that was wrong?