Indeed, heroic caricatures seem comparatively less cartoonish at a time when nonfiction heroes like Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds have been tarnished by accusations of fraud, said David Zinczenko, editor in chief of Men's Health.
"The sports field is littered with false heroes and antiheroes and fallen heroes right now," Zinczenko said by e-mail. Norris represents a perfect antidote because he remains, unlike the athletes, forever two-dimensional. "We've never known anything about the guy, except for what we see on big and little screens," he said. "He's square-jawed, muscular, action-oriented - everything we want in a guy who can get things done."
However unfashionable these macho caricatures may have seemed even five years ago, their cartoonish image of macho rectitude actually may be enhanced by their dogged efforts to protect an all-American image.
Ian Spector, who founded the satirical Thetruthaboutchuck.com in 2005, is finding this out the hard way. Last month, Norris sued Gotham Books, the publisher of Spector's companion book to his Web site - The Truth About Chuck Norris: 400 Facts About the World's Greatest Human - asserting that the book misappropriated his name and image and associated him with unsavory and illegal behavior. (The suit is continuing.)
"He takes himself very seriously," Spector, 19, a cognitive neuroscience major at Brown, said of his muse and adversary. "Maybe because he takes himself so seriously, it makes it all the more ridiculous."
So, then, like Shatner, is Norris really just a joke?
"I don't want to say yes," Spector said warily, "because I don't want to have him see me calling him a joke."
RSS