Word: grounded
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Ultimately, though, Cuomo's verdict on heroism was more negative. "I don't think we can have heroes anymore," he told his audience. "The ground is too hard for heroes to grow." The audience was then left to ask itself: Where have all the heroes gone? And why can't we, at one of the centers of our great nation's power, generate more of them? Many of us students think that we ourselves are the seeds of future heroes. In truth, we are actually part of the hard-packed ground. We are either too cynical to believe that real...
...file at the offices of various publication, passed up for professorships and passed over for jobs. And the "heroes" who do make it, or at least the pretenders to that title, have been installed as our role models--at the expense of people who excel primarily at softening that ground. Our professors are leaders in their fields first, teachers of their craft second. The Kennedy School itself is staffed almost entirely via the political revolving door...
Cuomo cautioned that we cannot expect heroes to arise on their own. But that doesn't mean that heroism lies beyond our grasp. It simply means that we should be willing NOT to be heroes, to acknowledge that our most exalted role might lie, instead, in softening the ground so that future heroes will have a place to grow. When they hear that Cuomo came to Harvard to speak about "the liberal agenda," too many people probably assumed that they had heard it all before, and that if it was all old news, who needed it? Those people, no matter...
Cuomo is right. The ground today is too hard for heroes. But if more people are willing to cry for their ideas in the ARCO Forum, perhaps their tears will soften the ground...
...contrast, the French Club's modern French rap performance at this year's show was particularly refreshing. One club member began the performance by coming on stage wearing a beret and carrying a loaf of bread. He immediately dashed both to the ground, grabbing instead a microphone and starting to rap. His implicit statement: yes, berets and French bread define one part of my heritage, but don't think that you completely "understand" my sense of identity or me. Rather, he chose to show us the influence that hip-hop music and culture have had on his identity. If other...