Hero worship is weird. Best seems like a sort-of harmless example, although you're right that putting abuse and (potential) vehicular homicide in with "greatness" isn't a Good Thing. The strength of the need for hero worship really hit me during the US reaction to 9/11/2001. Sept 10th the Shrub was an obvious incompetent with plummeting popularity. Sept 11th and 12th he was flying around on Air Force One and hiding in bunkers, but by the 13th, or 14th at the latest, he was the Brave Dear Leader who was going to save the country by whupping somebody's ass. Very, very weird. That set me to wondering whether hero worship is some kind of genetic taint humans simply have, which there's no point fighting. The best outcome may be to channel it to something reasonably limited and harmless. And that was when I started thinking that maybe cermonial monarchies actually perform a very useful function (although maintaining the stratospheric standards of behavior suitable for heroes is obviously pretty hard on the poor blighters).