“They have left a mine for what could be a minefield,” said Ken Herman in The Philadelphia Inquirer. As the world watched the rescue last week of 33 Chilean miners who’d been trapped underground for 69 days, one had to wonder if they’re ready for what happens next. The miners—or “Los 33” as they’re now known in Chile—stepped straight from the rescue capsule into a blizzard of movie offers and interview requests and the kind of intrusive public curiosity usually experienced by Hollywood celebrities. Sudden fame and wealth can be disorienting for anyone. For simple men trying to piece their lives back together after a horrendous ordeal, “the perils are obvious. Happy endings don’t always last.”
Let’s just hope the miners don’t waste this golden marketing opportunity, said Linda Thaler in HuffingtonPost.com. When they stepped out of their long dark night to hug their children, wives, and, in one case, mistress, these guys became overnight “folk heroes.” The window of opportunity won’t last long, but right now each one of them “has as much branding and endorsement potential as LeBron James.” Celebrity does have its pressures, said the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in an editorial, but they don’t quite stack up to the pressures of a life spent working in a copper mine for $1 an hour. If Los 33 can stick together with the same brotherhood and smarts that got them through the past two terrible months, “handling their 15 minutes of fame should be a cinch.”
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