They weren't hung up by their thumbs, or given a New York Police Department-type howdy to a broomstick. Eleven days of boredom might have been their toughest challenge. If not, maybe it was having to go nearly two weeks without a Quarterpounder that qualified them as heroes. That would conform with the societal trend to hyperbolize everything that we are and do and know and experience, and to subvert the language to serve that trend. In the wonderful world of hyperbole, the intensifiers are squandered so liberally that they soon lose all credibility.
Plain statement becomes as rare as understatement.
And the 24 crew members of that EP-3 spy plane aren't just some mighty lucky survivors of a freak encounter with a crazy man, they're the near unanimous media selection as the first great American heroes of the 21st century. Part of the problem here might be that we just aren't much good at the hero business, the making or the worship. The Greeks were good at it, and the Brits still are. But like frog and kraut and guinea, we just never got the hang. For one thing, our pedestals usually ricketed from the curtain draw.