Folk Hero

In the wake of the sudden fame of Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who, as you've surely heard, dramatically walked off the job last week when he cursed out an unruly passenger, inflated the aircraft's emergency slide and plunged feet first to instant celebrity (after grabbing two beers for the road), I've spent the last few days trying to figure out the ins and outs of his new occupation: folk hero. According to Wikipedia (yes, I just resorted to that middle school term-paper info source)

Aaron Swartz, who co-founded Reddit and became an Internet folk hero for fighting to make online content free to the public, committed suicide Friday. He was 26. Swartz hanged himself in his Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment, said a statement released by his family and his girlfriend. "Aaron's commitment to social justice was profound, and defined his life," the statement said. "He used his prodigious skills as a programmer and technologist not to enrich himself but to make the Internet and the world a fairer, better place.

At the cavernous, tin-sided warehouse, customers are once again idly browsing through the statues of Jesus, painted urns, clothes, dishes and other assorted surplus items for sale. Robert Wayne O'Ferrell, the owner, oversees the scene, relieved that life is once again so simple. A month ago FBI agents by the score descended on this little south Alabama town, seizing material from the warehouse, digging up O'Ferrell's yard at home and even exploring his septic tanks.

Although the Red Sox are among the teams exploring the shortstop market, don't be surprised if they do little other than add a bullpen arm or two before the deadline. Scouts who saw them play the White Sox believe they could be stronger than the Yankees once David Ortiz joins a lineup that has Carl Crawford playing at a level he rarely showed a year ago.... What does Alfonso Soriano have in common with Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Willie Stargell, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Les Bell, Heinie Manush, Jimmie Foxx, Duckie Medwick, Adam LaRoche and Dustin Pedroia?

Former Sen. Sam J. Ervin Jr., who symbolized to the nation a latter-day Diogenes bent on finding the truth in an era of Watergate lies, died Tuesday in a Winston-Salem, N.C., hospital. The archetypical Southern storyteller was 88, and doctors said he died of respiratory failure complicated by kidney failure. On March 30, Ervin had undergone gall bladder surgery at Grace Hospital in his hometown of Morganton and developed kidney failure as a complication.

Since taking responsibility for the federal action that ended in a fiery disaster at a cult compound in Waco, Tex., Atty. Gen. Janet Reno has emerged as a folk hero, the closest thing the Clinton Cabinet has to a star. The federal assault she authorized precipitated the mass deaths of the Branch Davidian cult. But ironically her stock soared anyway as a result of her refreshing "buck stops here" attitude.

It was 2:10 a.m. Tuesday, with the dawn of Election Day a few hours away, and Lloyd Bentsen was making his last campaign speech as a vice presidential candidate. For that moment, as he faced the 150 or so campaign workers who had gathered on the candlelit tarmac to welcome him home, Bentsen finally lost his reserve. He let the tears come to his eyes. "It's been an absolutely incredible experience," he said. And for Bentsen, it absolutely was.

Roger Tory Peterson, artist and bird lover, started a "revolution" 60 years ago in the hilly meadows and woods surrounding this small city in upstate New York. A walk in the woods hasn't been the same since. It was here that Peterson found the inspiration for an epic work, "A Field Guide to the Birds," a book that revolutionized nature study. It took ornithology out of the laboratory and made the feathered world in the treetops more accessible to the common man.

Less than two years after he walked across the country to alert people to the importance of cancer checkups, William Croker of Hawaiian Gardens will try to do it again. Known as Walkin' Willie, he has become something of a folk hero. A book and a song have been written about him. Governors send him their autographs. Tennessee has designated a day in his honor. "What I do seems to capture people's imaginations," said Croker, who plans to leave Feb.

Less than two years after he walked across the country to alert people to the importance of cancer checkups, William Croker of Hawaiian Gardens will try to do it again. Known as Walkin' Willie, he has become something of a folk hero. A book and a song have been written about him. Governors send him their autographs. Tennessee has designated a day in his honor. "What I do seems to capture people's imaginations," said Croker, who plans to leave Feb.

Liberal fervor, which took a hit when it became apparent that Barack Obama the president was not going to live up to the promise of Barack Obama the Shepard Fairey poster, is back in action. From the streets of Manhattan to the pages of Facebook, from L.A.'s City Hall to email blasts from MoveOn.org, left-leaning types are getting their mojo back, summoning the spirit not just of the Obama campaign (that decorous, dignified affair) but kicking it old school in the vein of the wild and crazy 2004 Howard Dean campaign (you remember, back in the days when the word "liberal" was actually spoken out loud — in Dean's case really loud)

In the wake of the sudden fame of Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who, as you've surely heard, dramatically walked off the job last week when he cursed out an unruly passenger, inflated the aircraft's emergency slide and plunged feet first to instant celebrity (after grabbing two beers for the road), I've spent the last few days trying to figure out the ins and outs of his new occupation: folk hero. According to Wikipedia (yes, I just resorted to that middle school term-paper info source)

On the bright side for Cavaliers fans, at least they can see LeBron James when he comes to town with his new team! They're playing for keeps this spring with Toronto's Chris Bosh and Atlanta's Joe Johnson already surveying the ruins of their teams before the Cavaliers' season, and possibly their world, ended in a stunning loss to the creaky Celtics. Actually, it wasn't stunning at all, with James playing much of the series left-handed. Nevertheless, the world that kissed his feet right up to the presentation of his second MVP award before Game 1, suddenly awoke to the realization he was clueless, heartless and/or a quitter.

In the few seconds it took Iraqi journalist Muntather Zaidi to wing a pair of shoes at President Bush, the Middle East got its own version of Joe the Plumber. Just as Joe Wurzelbacher's gripes to Barack Obama during the U.S. presidential election catapulted him to fame, Zaidi's burst of rage toward Bush during a Baghdad news conference Sunday has made him a household name across the Middle East.

ST. PETERSBURG -- Let's go ahead and get this out of way. Evan Longoria was never Miss Corpus Christi, and Eva Longoria never homered in her first two postseason at-bats. People who follow the Rays know this and got tired of the Eva-Evan jokes about 70 wins ago. But it's new to people who haven't seen many Tampa Bay games. That means just about everybody who owns a TV outside Florida. For them, Thursday's playoff game was Tampa Bay's national debut. What they saw was a rerun of the last five months.

Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman The Fabled City (Epic) * * * Some people think folk music is more honest than other forms, but it's also rich territory for alter egos. Bob Dylan called himself Blind Boy Grunt to continue making folk recordings as he was heading toward pop stardom; his early mentor, the Brooklyn-born Elliott Adnopoz, became a Wild Westerner as Ramblin' Jack Elliott.

Whipsaw-swift developments in Moscow left Soviet-watchers struggling for superlatives Wednesday to describe Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin but considerably less sanguine about the future for a reborn Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Much as President Bush heaped praise on Yeltsin, so too did academics around the country, saying he had quieted rumblings about his reliability in a crisis and assumed a mantle of leadership that cannot be stripped from him.

They're selling T-shirts with the meter-feeding granny on them, they're singing songs about her. The T-shirts show her behind bars made of parking meters and say, "Sylvia Stayton . . . guilty of kindness." The song, played on radio station WLW and sung to the tune of the old Marty Robbins classic, "El Paso," goes like this: The grandma was adding more time on the meter, The policeman said, "Lady, you're breaking the law!" But Sylvia ignored him and dropped in a quarter.

Among the dozens of apocryphal anecdotes that have attached themselves to the late, great Mexican comic actor Mario Moreno, one choice example involves how Moreno acquired his famous stage name, Cantinflas. As recounted in "eforeCantinflas!

Bora Milutinovic's weathered features and mop of gray curls seem out of place among the pictures of lanky, young Chinese soccer players pasted into Cai Xiaomei's scrapbook. But for 16-year-old Cai, watching from behind the fence as the national team works out in tropical southwestern China, the Yugoslav coach is every inch her hero. "Milu is so cool," she said, using the nickname by which he is universally known in China. Millions of Chinese agree.