FYI - the daughter who called Stack a hero was Samantha Bell, his daughter from his first marriage. She’s in her twenties and lives in Norway. Yes, Norway. No idea what she thinks of Norway’s tax system but she elaborated on her feelings about America’s tax system and the house burning:
She has gone on to say that she respects the mourning of the family who were killed and thinks her father’s actions were wrong. I’m not sure that really qualifies as ‘retracting’ the hero comment, as the headline states. Also no word of concern for her young siblings or step mother.
As for the word hero, I’m guessing a lot of Darwin Award candidates also get called heroes by their relatives, for living life on their own terms. Stack, sadly, doesn’t qualify for the Darwin Awards.
I’ll add the term “diva” to the discussion as a word that’s lost all significant meaning. Now it just means a woman with an attitude (or just a woman).
And standing ovations - they mean nothing when everyone gets one just for walking out on stage.
So can any enemy soldier ever be a hero, even though we don’t agree with his side’s cause? If not, then none of our best soldiers can be a hero from the point of view of someone from the enemy country.
In a post-September 11th context, this debate has been going on in public at least since Bill Maher’s ‘lobbing cruise missiles’ comments. He made those statements in December 2001, I think, and nobody’s any closer to resolving the question.
Exactly what I was going to post. You have to wonder about people throwing about words that in their context their using them make them as dumb as Homer Simpson.
Mr.Incredible/Syndrome: When everyone’s special; no one is.
In which case he’d be even less of a hero. But at least the Norway thing explains why his other daughter thinks well of him- she’s thousands of miles away from him and he didn’t take her home or put her life in danger. I do wonder why she’s in that socialist hellscape.
IIRC, the initial article I read said that she lost her job, and thus health insurance, while pregnant, and moved to Norway to take advantage of their health care system.
Anne, I think they did make it out, but I haven’t read much about it. Hopefully the wife and daughter are just keeping quiet and dealing with what are probably extremely mixed feelings about this guy.