The longing for heroes appears to be hard-wired into our DNA. We crave people for whom we can cheer, admire and emulate. We love to erect statues and shrines. But today’s transparent culture and obsession with celebrity makes it more difficult to find the people we can place on a pedestal.

Witness the implosions that have taken place in the traditional venues for hero worship.

In the military, we were quick to anoint Pvt. Jessica Lynch and Army Ranger Pat Tillman. The impulse to hype heroism was much faster than the truth. In the end, even more damage was done.

As Lynch told Congress, she “was under siege by media, all repeating the story of the little girl ‘Rambo’ from the hills of West Virginia who went down fighting. It was not true.” The military put her in the uncomfortable position of blowing the whistle or living a lie. In the meantime, an unquestioning media ran with the false account, knowing the public’s unending appetite for heroism.

Pat Tillman was a hero before arriving in Afghanistan, where he would be killed by friendly fire. He left behind a lucrative professional football contract to fight for a cause he believed in. Not good enough for the military, which spun a tale of Tillman charging the enemy before being cut down. The public ate it up.

Oh well, there’s always sports.

In baseball, the big story is Barry Bonds chasing down the longstanding home-run record while dodging investigators who want to question him about possible steroid use.

How about the Tour de France, which gave us the heroic Lance Armstrong, who overcame cancer to win the race seven consecutive times? Last year’s winner tested positive for a banned substance. This year’s leader was dumped by his own team over suspicions that he had routinely avoided testing and then lied about it.

OK, so let’s turn to basketball. Wait! An official has been implicated in a betting scandal and players are constantly in and out of trouble with the law. Guess that leaves football. What’s that? Quarterback Michael Vick has been indicted on dog-fighting charges? And dogs that didn’t measure up were drowned, strangled and otherwise discarded? Ugh.

Maybe society is going about this all wrong. Pursuing public heroes worked in the past because the damning details of their private lives were kept hidden. Joe DiMaggio – an icon of class and decorum – was an utter jerk to his family, according to a searing expose in Esquire magazine. Say it ain’t so.

The key to finding heroes is to look close to home. They are in our families, in our schools, in our churches, in our neighborhoods. They don’t seek publicity, and they get none.

But they embody all that we crave. They are all we need.