This essay engages in a reflexive analysis of how to say something“officially recognized as intellectual”about some person who is emotively sensational. This essay has two parts: (a) a position statement on herolines that invites engagement in a process of rediscovery and reconsideration how the privileged, intellectual class can write biographies that, in C. Wright Mills' terms, truly integrates the subject's biography with the historical and socially constructed essence of his or herbeing; and (b) an inquiry into whether celebrated individuals are truly worthy of respect and in what ways he or she may be reactionary, reformative (playing by the rules of liberal democracy with some changes in mind), or revolutionary.