The people...or at least the people who cared enough about this popularity poll to call, text message, or log onto AOL's voting site...have spoken and these are the people chosen to be on their list of the top 10 all-time "Greatest Americans" (as presented on tonight's Discovery Channel special, which I watched out of idle curiosity having skipped all but the very first hour of this mini-series):
1 ) Ronald Reagan
2 ) Abraham Lincoln
3 ) Martin Luther King, Jr.
4 ) George Washington
5 ) Benjamin Franklin
6 ) George W. Bush
7 ) Bill Clinton
8 ) Elvis Presley
9 ) Oprah Winfrey
10)Franklin Roosevelt
It's an...eclectic...list of personalities to be sure. It doesn't really bother me...it's not serious enough to get worked up about...but I think that their use of the word "greatest" was purposefully loaded. With about of a third of the overall top 100 list filled with athletes and celebrities (including Michael Jackson, Brett Favre, Tom Cruise, Michael Jordan, Madonna, and "Dr. Phil") it probably would have been more accurate to call this whimsical little enterprise "Most Popular Americans" (popularity and greatness do not necessarily go hand in hand.)
(In case you're interested, the rest of the top 25 were (in order): Billy Graham, Thomas Jefferson, Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, John F. Kennedy, Bob Hope, Bill Gates, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lance Armstrong, Muhammad Ali, Rosa Parks, The Wright Brothers (who are counted together as 1 "Greatest American"), Henry Ford, and Neil Armstrong.)
2 comments:
You can Tell who runs the discovery channel if Reagan won !!!
Obviously alot of people didn't understand the contest!
Great Blog, Thanks!
tracyv
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