With youthful disdain, he corrected me. "This is Anakin Skywalker," he said. "He's a bad guy." Moments later he returned the question: "Who's your hero?"

Oddly, it caught me off guard. I looked into his hopeful eyes, struggling for a meaningful answer, but nothing came. Truth is, I still can't think of an answer.

Troubled by my lack of admiration, I began searching for an explanation. It may be that I have skepticism in my blood, a sort of natural distrust of greatness that makes admiration problematic.

Now in my early 30s, perhaps I've joined the masses of apathetic men — more TiVo than tiger, more Pat Sajak than Patton, more TGIF than MLK.

I suppose an investigation into environmental factors is in order. It seems possible that my lack of admiration is emblematic of a broader social trend. In other words, maybe it's a supply problem. Who among us is worthy of admiration these days?

Should we consider our president a great hero? For a growing number of Americans, according to recent Gallup polls, the answer is "no." In the past two months, almost every characteristic of the president's public image has reached its all-time low.

In the past, we often looked to the military for heroes. While many Americans remember Dwight Eisenhower, how many know the name of today's top commander? Does John Abizaid ring a bell?

What about American athletes? Doping. Assault. Rape. Drug abuse. The sordid sports headlines — sex cruise, anyone? — no longer surprise us. And yet, we still search for heroes in the world of sports.

The music world? Aside from Bob Dylan's thought-provoking Victoria Secret ads, what superstars can inspire us to a higher cause? Kanye West? Mariah Carey?

What unites the nation in a common sense of awe? What keeps us glued to the TV set, besides natural disasters, unwinnable wars, terrorist plots, missing white women and celebrity court trials?

In a nation struggling to stand, we're preoccupied by a gaggle of wannabe celebrities, and a group of yahoos who drive hundreds of miles, but never get anywhere.

This is cache, read story here