Who is the greatest American?

[queerbychoice]

Over the last few days BBC News Online readers across the world have posted nominations for the greatest American ever, as part of a BBC-led global debate on the US's place in the world.

Homer Simpson: 20.74%
Martin Luther King: 16.69%
Abraham Lincoln: 16.45%
Thomas Jefferson: 10.01%
George Washington: 8.56%
Franklin D Roosevelt: 7.30%
Benjamin Franklin: 6.47%
Mr T: 6.07%
Bill Clinton: 4.93%
Bob Dylan: 2.79%

4547 Votes Cast

Disclaimer: This shortlist is made up from the 10 Americans who received the most nominations by an open public online vote and does not necessarily reflect the views of the BBC.

::splutters::

I don't know whether to applaud them for ridiculing Americans so thoroughly or be incensed that having a penis is clearly the only major requirement to get on the list.

And I have a bad feeling that the reason Homer Simpson is beating out Martin Luther King is that more people identify with him. Which is horrifying in itself.

Comments

[deadinmotion.livejournal.com]

yeah, especially because matt groening revealed that homer is actually canadian by birth -- winnipeg apparently.

[princesswitch.livejournal.com]

All right, but remember that what they're really measuring is not the greatness of Americans, but what British people, many of whom have probably met one American or less, *think* of Americans. Very different concept.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily. Quite a lot of Americans read the BBC website (me, for example - and enough of them that the site has an index page asking "Are you from the UK or elsewhere?" and providing different content based on what you answer), and since Americans are such a huge majority on the internet in general, I'd guess there are at least almost as many Americans voting on the BBC website as there are British people. Oh, and all the more so because the poll was located in the "Americas" section of their website, which we Americans are more likely to click on.

[socialismnow.livejournal.com]

Indeed; recently when the BBC asked for reader contributions on the question of what the world should do about Aung San Suu Kyi, the vast majority of the comments they published were non-British, though of course, one doesn't know for sure whether this was proportionate.

The BBC is in any case one of the best known - possibly the best known - and regarded media organizations in the world.

So there's no single country on whom one can blame the results.

how scary

[caffeined.livejournal.com]

Even scarier is this is conducted by the BBC -- proving that we dont give two shits about what we look like to other countries.

nice.

weas

[inkstained.livejournal.com]

i don't know if i'm more perturbed that a shiftless layabout is idolised by the public or that bill clinton is.

-ink

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Hey, at least George W. Bush isn't!

Re:

[inkstained.livejournal.com]

i think it's more that the people who idolise george bush junior don't read bbc news online.

-ink

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I know. Sadly . . .

[heron61.livejournal.com]

That is pretty scary. While part of sexism is that is is far more difficult for a woman to end up achieving the same status, and 60% of the list were US presidents (a concept that horrified me in it's own right, my own list would include no more than maybe 2 politicians and I'm baffled that anyone thinks that being the chump that most people elect to some office makes someone in any way great or even memorable) means that there were few possible spots for women. However, I'm still shocked that some of the popular female entertainers like Madonna didn't make the list and horrified that none of the great feminist leaders like Gloria Steinem were on the list.

There are times that it seems the best answer to the problems the US (and the First World in general) faces is to deport all of the idiots, willful bigots, and unthinking drones from some nation and have everyone thoughtful and reasonable move there. Then again, I'm an elitist and that solution would never work...

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I suffer from a terrible suspicion that after we deport all the idiots, we'll only need one small town to fit the remaining people in.

what about harriet fucking tubman?

[jenlight.livejournal.com]

I can't believe there isn't a single fucking woman on that list.


Oh forget it I can't even act surprised.

[deniz.livejournal.com]

1. Which American women of international renown would you put on the list? Hillary Clinton? Nancy Reagan? Janet Reno? Sandra Day O'Conner? Oprah? The only one I can think of would be Eleanor Roosevelt, but c'mon, people don't know history that well. International renown?

2. Homer Simpson - It always surprises Americans how much resentment there is outside home base. Consider this- to get HIV aid, Swaziland had to raise the legal age of consent to 18. Guess what? 53% of the population is under 18 and the average life expectancy is 37.

Second case: I live in Australia. We are negotiating with the US for a free trade deal. Like a number of countries around the world we have anti child pornography laws, and like every other country excepting North America, the Carribean, & Chile, our laws define child pornography as sexual depiction of persons under 16 years of age. Yeah that right - Traci Lord's xxx (vomit) is still for sale in Europe, Africa, Asia, here and just about everywhere else.

So what was the 2nd point of the 100+ point agenda put forward by the US negotiating team when they arrived. A: "Fix" your child pornography laws!

Thats why people go for Homer Simpson. He doesn't try to shove fucked American Moralism down anyone's throat.

[deniz.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should have added that the reason Chile now defines child pornography as under 18 is that they have just finished their free trade negotiations with the US. Before them, the same condition went into NAFTA.
I like America. My sister lives in CA, but with this sort of stuff, its all I can do to stop myself giving the administration and the people who elected them a royal "fuck you!' And NAFTA was a Clinton administration deal.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

As the comment above yours already suggested: Harriet Tubman certainly deserves to be listed. Or: Sacajawea and Susan B. Anthony are both already depicted on American dollar coins, so that must indicate a pretty widespread acknowledgement of their imortance. Or about the American women Nobel Prize winners: Toni Morrison, Pearl S. Buck and Jane Addams for literature and Gerty Cori, Barbara McClintock, Rosalyn Yalow and Gertrude Elion for science? Or how about Rosa Parks? Amelia Earhart? Helen Keller? Rachel Carson? Sojourner Truth? Ever heard of any of them?

I agree with your anti-American sentiments, as I already said in the entry itself (and all over my journal everywhere); but for you to suggest that there are no American women who deserve to be mentioned is both ridiculous and insulting.

[lightenup.livejournal.com]

I know some of them. Vaguely. Helen Keller would get my vote. The problem is the veil that history draws over women, as rhekarid points out, prompting many to refer to it as HIStory. Tory meaning conservative. A second issue is the confusion of celebrity with substance. Poll after poll has Americans putting Ronald Reagan as the greatest US President of all time.

[rhekarid.livejournal.com]

I'm trapped between terror, lack of surprise, and hilarity. I think the main reason for no women being on the list is an older, more indirect sexism; the tendency of history to quietly sweep such people under the rug. That, plus people's general inability to even *acknowledge*, let alone learn history, would make it unlikely that enough would even have a woman come to mind that they would make it onto a majority list.

And it's both depressing and funny that America has had so few truly great people, and even fewer that anyone knows about, that Mr. T has a solid foothold in the list. I pity the fool that that thinks more than 1% of politicians deserve a shot at that list, or even to be above the T.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I think there's plenty of modern current sexism going on too; it's not as though there's such a shortage of female cartoon characters that they had to pick male ones.

[rhekarid.livejournal.com]

Eck, but the female cartoons are almost all such stereotypes, I don't think anyone would vote them as "Greatest American."

And I never said there wasn't plenty of modern sexism...I just think that the larger reason for no women being on the list is mostly because they've been blotted out of history, and those who are there are unknown because people are uneducated simps anyway.

[sapphiretrance.livejournal.com]

Actually one of the first things I wondered on seeing that list was why they had put Homer Simpson on it rather than Lisa Simpson.

~sapphiretrance

[donutgirl.livejournal.com]

I saw a different list that had Jesus at number 13. teehee.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

He's not American in the least.

[donutgirl.livejournal.com]

no, duh. but try telling that to fundamentalist christians.

actual quote, regarding the desirability of bilingual education in America:

"English was good enough for Jesus, so it's good enough for us!"

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Hee.