America Hates Sleep

Yesterday, I was reading about Ramsey Clark in Esquire online. The article is pretty good, but this paragraph struck me:

When it's over, he walks in his slow, steady pace down to the cab. He's been going all day, on a couple hours sleep, barely even eating, but he shows no sign of it. "That was worthwhile," he says.

Reading that, afterwards, I realized that I'd seen this implicit admiration for people who don't sleep elsewhere. John Grisham's "The Firm". Every story about every startup I've ever heard told. Even my advisor, when he was telling me to work harder. I've never even seen a biography say, "He slept eight hours a day".

What is wrong with this place? Studies show that having enough sleep is explicitly tied to all sorts of benefits. Why, then, are the public role models people who barely go to bed?