Hero or just another victim ... kid

This is rich. According to a story on CNN, "The family of the congressional
page at the center of the Mark Foley e-sex scandal issued a statement
praising their son as a hero."

Now, I'm not the kind of guy who likes to blame the victim or re-victimize
the victim or curse a victim's darkness when I could bring light instead, but
this whole culture of hero-worship in the United States is getting ridiculous.
Just because you are a sex crime victim doesn't make you a damn hero. And
so far as I can tell, the pages involved in this "e-sex" scandal aren't even
sex crime victims so much as they are recipients of SPAM.

Now granted, dirty old men shouldn't be sending sexually suggestive
e-mails and IMs to Congressional pages, but the receipt of such missives
doesn't make ANYBODY a hero. Maybe, just maybe, if the teenage page
had been chased through the Washington, D.C. sewer system leading a bunch
of much younger pages to safety, putting his own life at risk then MAYBE he'd
be a hero.

If being harassed is the criteria to be a hero then I hate to tell you that I'm
probably one of the greatest American heroes you'll ever meet. People shout
things at me from moving cars, send me nasty e-mails and generally dislike
me for being abrasive and unappealing. I also had a cousin who like to
wrestle just a little too much when I was 12. I'm like Batman by some standards.

The kid is just a victim and not a particularly harmed one at that. So let's get Foley
taken care of, but let's give the hero talk a rest.