Sunday, Jan. 29, 2006 | 7:48 a.m.
Jack Sheehan is a Las Vegas author. He writes a column every other week for The Sun.
The other day my 7-year-old daughter, Lily, asked me a homework question: What is the difference between a celebrity and a hero/ heroine?
It's a good question, certainly one that we've probably all given some thought to, especially in the last few years since the events of 9/ 11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, and the like have given us all a more certain sense of our mortality.
This is the answer I gave her: "Celebrities are people who are well known, whether they deserve our admiration or not, like The Wiggles, while a hero or heroine is a person who earns our respect for doing noble or great things which benefit others."
I mentioned occupations such as soldiers, police officers, firefighters, doctors and teachers as being the types of people who, if they performed their jobs nobly, could fall under the heading of heroes.
Then my wife, Carol, threw in Oprah, which I didn't argue with. "Anybody who gets on television or sings songs on the radio or plays professional sports," I explained to Lily, "is considered a celebrity. Being a hero is much harder."
At the extreme end of both of these spectrums, I explained, we have Paris Hilton, who is a celebrity merely because of her name, her family fortune for which she deserves no credit and the fact that she shows up at the opening of every nightclub.
And Rosa Parks, who was a heroine because she made a courageous stand at great risk to herself, and thereby benefited all those who are discriminated against because of their race or gender.
I told Lily that it is possible for a person to fall into both categories. When she said, "Like who?" I brought up Oprah Winfrey again, because she happened to be on television at that very moment, and former President Jimmy Carter, whom I was privileged to interview last year at the Carter Center in Atlanta.
I told Lily that Oprah could be considered a heroine as well as a celebrity because she uses her huge forum to help people, whether it's victims of child abuse or poverty-stricken children in Africa for whom she builds schools.
Also because Oprah has a book club that promotes reading and elevates unsung authors onto the best-seller lists. (As an unsung author myself, I have to give Ms. Winfrey a figurative high-five for that. And though she stubbed her toe on the "Million Little Pieces" endorsement, she had the class to publicly apologize.)
Lily then offered that Oprah should tell everyone to go to the library, "Cuz you get your very own library card with a turtle on it and you never have to pay."
Carter, I told her, was a celebrity because he was famous as one of our past presidents, and he was a hero as well because he helps people in other countries enjoy the benefits of free elections. Also, even though he's now 81, Carter gets on his hands and knees and pounds nails so that poor people can enjoy the American dream of having their own home.
"Wow, Dad," Lily said. "J.P. (her brother) has gotten to meet two presidents, (Carter and Bill Clinton), but I got to meet a fireman named Mr. Clinton on our field trip. Can he count for me because his name is a president?"
"The name doesn't make a hero," I told her. "The person does."
"J.P. got his picture taken with President Carter," Lily added. "I got Celine Dion, but she was never president."
Feeling that I needed to balance the books at that moment -- an essential obligation of any parent -- I told Lily that many people consider Celine Dion a heroine as well.
"Yeah, she's a good singer, but she also gave money to the people in the flood." (She remembered that Dion and her husband, Rene Angelil, had contributed a million bucks to hurricane victims.)
Feeling I needed a little more relevant elaboration, I said, "So far in her life Britney Spears is just a celebrity. Maybe she'll be a heroine some day, but she's got a ways to go."
"Her mom should tell her to cover her belly," Lily said.
Lily then reminded me that she and her mom had wrapped up three of her dolls and sent them to children in Louisiana after what she calls "the flood." She also had included in the packages copies of the photo I took of her and Dion, and she explained in a note that the singer cared about the children in New Orleans as well.
I told Lily that if she continued to do nice things like that, she might someday become a hero to someone herself.
***
The emphasis our American society places on celebrity, whether earned through talent or merely by exposing an index of insecurities on a reality television show, has reached the absurd.
When Bruce Springsteen penned his song "57 Channels and Nothing On," about the vacuity being beamed across our airwaves at all hours of the day and night, he was dead on the mark.
When someone such as Richard Hatch, whose claim to fame was that he strutted his pudgy nude body for the TV cameras and tricked his way into winning the original "Survivor" series, is repeatedly labeled by television tabloid journalists as a celebrity, it's time to question whether that term has lost relevance.
Perhaps it's an appropriate comeuppance that Hatch's celebrity status recently drew the attention of the IRS, which took him to court for nonpayment of taxes on his million-dollar prize and other income. Last week, he was convicted of tax evasion and faces up to 13 years in prison.
Maybe it was the elevation of Kelly and Jack Osbourne, the two confused children of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, being followed everywhere by paparazzi as though their ill-conceived activities were somehow important, that pushed me over the edge.
Or maybe it's the sad realization that entire beautiful forests of pine trees have been sacrificed to create pulp to explain and analyze ad nauseum the breakup of Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, and whether Angelina Jolie will dump Pitt as ingloriously as he dumped his wife, that makes me fear for the cultural legacy of our country. (Please believe me, I don't read these articles, but they're hard to ignore when they hit you in the face as you're placing your 14 items on the counter at the Express Checkout lane.
***
I fully acknowledge and appreciate that the celebrity culture and all it implies is an integral part of the Las Vegas economy. Case in point: When Paris Hilton was announced as the hostess of the Venetian's New Year's Eve bash at Tao nightclub, tickets going for $500 sold out the first day.
"I was absolutely amazed by that," Venetian President Rob Goldstein told me the other day. "Who would have thought she would be that kind of a draw?"
One of my goals as a father is not to let my kids become too enamored with oversized names in bright colors on a marquee, or with people whose faces are splattered all over magazine covers at the supermarket. And to pay closer attention to those who often work in obscurity, but instead fall into that far more select and distinctive category known as heroes.
"SpongeBob Squarepants is a celebrity, but not a hero, right Dad?" Lily said, as our lesson was concluding.
Smart girl.
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