Hero

Consider this imaginary scenario:A man dives into a lake, risking his life to save a drowning child. The local media rush to the scene; a hero is born. For that is what the headlines will call him.That night the hero's friends take him to a restaurant for a drink. After the strain and excitement of the day, they want to treat him to some well-deserved relaxation and to toast his good deed. One drink becomes several.A little woozy, the hero drives home. On the way, he veers across the center lane and slams into another car, killing the driver.

SLATS GROBNIK tossed the magazine over his shoulder. Then he leaned on the bar, shook his head and muttered: "Enough, already."I retrieved the magazine, which was People, and asked him what it was that disturbed him.Slats pointed to the cover and the headline that said: "We believe in MAGIC: America finds a hero." Next to it was a picture of a smiling Magic Johnson."What is this hero stuff?" Slats said.Well, you can't deny that for someone so young, vital and successful to be afflicted with a deadly virus, he took it with uncommon courage, grace and dignity.

"Sliders" is "Quantum Leap" for teen-age viewers. Or you might think of it as a low-rent, male version of "VR.5."The promotional campaign for the new Fox action-adventure series states the premise this way: "All Quinn Mallory wanted was an 'A' on his physics project . . . But the only 'A' he got was in Adventure." (If only as much distillation of thought was brought to the script.)Quinn Mallory (Jerry O'Connell) is the hero of "Sliders," which premieres at 8 tonight on WBFF (Channel 45). The Fox press release describes him as "a handsome physics grad student who accidentally creates a wormhole or gateway between dimensions . . . that allows him to slide to parallel universes."

The Walters' big fall exhibit celebrates four larger-than-life heroes from Greek mythology: Achilles, Odysseus, Hercules - and, um, Helen of Troy, an unfaithful wife who caused a war that wreaked havoc on two cities. Under what criteria could Helen even conceivably be considered a "hero"? Might she be more accurately termed a celebrity? Wasn't she merely the 12th century B.C. equivalent of Britney Spears, whose romances and legal scrapes vastly entertained the citizenry? Regine Schulz, curator of ancient art at the Walters Art Museum, begs to differ.

ATLANTA -- Mark Lemke drove home late Wednesday night after the game, accompanied by his mom and dad.And a parade of CBS-TV trucks right behind.Yes, you read it right. Mark Lemke now travels with an entourage."All we want to do," the producer explained to Lemke, who was having some problem grasping the concept, "is get a shot out of you getting out of the car and walking into the house."Talk about drama. Should he wave? Should he jump up the steps? What if he can't get the key to work?Mark Lemke, this is your life.

WASHINGTON -- You ask about a unique show of courage, and you leave thinking it was nothing special. The Washington Redskins brainwash you that way. They convince you what Darrell Green did yesterday was routine.It wasn't, but these are the Redskins, and they're going to the Super Bowl, and just leave it at that. "You're trying to make me a hero," Green told one reporter yesterday. Only in the Redskins' locker room does that qualify as a sin.The Redskins don't do heroes. If they did, they'd be just another gifted team, not the brutally efficient unit that pounded Detroit 41-10 in the NFC championship game yesterday at RFK Stadium.

An outsider dressed in black rides into an idyllic looking community. The outsider wants only to rest and then move on.But there's trouble in the community. The town-folk are being terrorized by thugs. Before long, the outsider is drawn into the trouble, fighting for the town-folk and urging them to stand up and fight for themselves.Sound familiar? Like the plot for the classic western "Shane," starring Alan Ladd?It is. But it's also the plot of a made-for-TV movie called "Shame," which stars Amanda Donohoe and airs at 9 tonight on Lifetime, the cable network targeted to women.

On television last night, Earvin "Magic" Johnson sat before a score of journalists, a bank of microphones, a forest of television cameras, and told the world he had contracted the HIV -- AIDS virus.His wife sat beside him. They have been married for about two months."This is not like my life is over," he said. "I'm going to live a long time. This is another challenge, another chapter in my life. It's like your back is against the wall and you just have to come out swinging. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go on. I'm going to beat it and I'm going to have fun."

IT'S BEEN over a week since the hurricane rightly called Ivan the Terrible ripped through Grenada, destroyed or damaged 90 percent of the homes and left at least 39 people dead and thousands homeless. Electricity was kaput. I've heard that phone service has been restored, but I still haven't been able to get in touch with the one Grenadian I hope was not among the 39 fatalities. My list of heroes is a short one, but Leslie Pierre sits at the very top of it. Pierre is the founder, publisher and editor of The Grenadian Voice, a newspaper he started in the early 1980s in direct defiance of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, which was run by devotees of the Marxist New Jewel Movement.

WASHINGTON -- All week long, House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been saying he wants to throw Rep. Robert G. Torricelli off the House Select Committee on Intelligence. He and others in the House were angry that the New Jersey Democrat had revealed evidence of CIA links to the killer of an American in Guatemala.But in the end, House Republicans decided yesterday that they so disliked Mr. Torricelli that they did not want to make him a martyr. And at the last moment yesterday afternoon, they referred the matter to the House ethics committee.