100 Greatest Americans, my foot!

As usual, I'm late coming to this -- fashionably so, I hope. Jeff sent me a link to the Discovery Channel's 100 Greatest Americans, along with a number of comments, one of which I quote here.

"%$&!!"

If you knew Jeff, you would know that he can accurately call balls and strikes from an obstructed view seat out near the foul pole at Fenway, while waxing philosophically about baseball's dim past, and carrying only one thing in his pocket which was thank God the confirmation number for our tickets. You would also know that the quote indicates that he expresses strong reservations with the list. And rightly so.

Tom Cruise? Laura Bush? Ellen Degeneres? Brett Favre? Michael Moore? Rush Limbaugh? John Edwards? Dr. Phil? Dr. Phil???? The absence of John Adams, Thomas Paine, and Andrew Jackson? Every president but one since FDR made the list, but only four before him. And their choice for number one just makes me want to cry. I don't care whether you like the man or not, approve of him or not, he's just not the Greatest American.

Every single person I discussed this with expressed similar feelings about the list. Everyone had a long list of people to strike from the list. But once the ranting ended, the women stopped weeping, and the apoplectic stroke victims were made comfortable, rationality raised its ugly head. It is, after all, a list of 100, so it seems to me that if you are going to pull someone off the list, you ought to replace them with someone else. This turns out to be much harder than it looks. Nobody was able (or willing) to do it.

I think a list like this should stand up over time. Fifty years from now, anyone should look at this list and nod their head in agreement, or at least recognize every name. I can't believe that the current list qualifies in this regard.

Well, here's my shot, with additions in blue and deletions in magenta. Maybe it's a bit writer-heavy, but that's better than being pop-heavy. There's still a few who ought to go, and I'm embarassed that I can't think of any decent replacements. When I do, I reserve the right to edit the list.

Ali, Muhammad
Angelou, Maya
Anthony, Susan B.
Armstrong, Lance
Armstrong, Neil
Ball, Lucille
Barton, Clara
Bell, Alexander Graham
Boone, Daniel
Bryan, William Jennings
Bush, Barbara
Bush, George H. W.
Bush, George W.
Bush, Laura
Calhoun, John C
Carnegie, Andrew
Carson, Johnny
Carter, Jimmy
Carver, George Washington
Charles, Ray
Chavez, Cesar
Clay, Henry
Clinton, Bill
Clinton, Hillary
Cooper, James Fennimore
Cosby, Bill
Crazy Horse
Crockett, Davy
Cruise, Tom
DeGeneres, Ellen
Dickenson, Emily
Disney, Walt
Douglass, Frederick
Earhart, Amelia
Eastwood, Clint
Edison, Thomas Alva
Edwards, John
Einstein, Albert
Eisenhower, Dwight
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Faulkner, William
Favre, Brett
Fitzgerald, F Scott
Ford, Henry
Franklin, Benjamin
Frost, Robert
Fulton, Robert
Gates, Bill
Geronimo
Gibson, Mel
Giuliani, Rudolph
Glenn, John
Goddard, Robert
Graham, Billy
Grant, Ulysses S
Hamilton, Alexander
Hanks, Tom
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Hefner, Hugh
Hemingway, Ernest
Henry, Patrick
Hepburn, Katharine
Hope, Bob
Hughes, Howard
Irving, Washington
Jackson, Andrew
Jackson, Michael
Jay, John
Jefferson, Thomas
Jobs, Steve
Johnson, Lyndon B.
Jones, John Paul
Jordan, Michael
Keller, Helen
Kennedy, John F.
Kennedy, Robert F.
Kennedy Onassis, Jacqueline
King Jr., Dr. Martin Luther
Lee, Robert E.
Lewis & Clark
Limbaugh, Rush
Lincoln, Abraham
Lindbergh, Charles
Lucas, George
Madison, James
Madonna
Malcolm X
Marshall, John
McGraw, Dr. Phil
Melville, Herman
Monroe, Marilyn
Moore, Michael
Morse, Samuel
Murphy, Audie
Murrow, Edward R
Nixon, Richard
Obama, Barack
Owens, Jesse
Paine, Thomas
Parks, Rosa
Patton, George
Pocahontas
Poe, Edgar Allan
Powell, Colin
Presley, Elvis
Reagan, Ronald
Reeve, Christopher
Rice, Condoleezza
Robinson, Jackie
Rockefeller, John D
Rogers, Will
Roosevelt, Eleanor
Roosevelt, Franklin D
Roosevelt, Theodore
Ruth, Babe
Sagan, Carl
Salk, Jonas
Schwarzenegger, Arnold
Sinatra, Frank
Sinclair, Upton
Sitting Bull
Smith, Joseph
Spielberg, Steven
Steinbeck, John
Stewart, Jimmy
Stewart, Martha
Stowe, Harriett Beecher
Tesla, Nikola
Thoreau, Henry David
Tillman, Pat
Truman, Harry
Trump, Donald
Tubman, Harriet
Twain, Mark
Vanderbilt, Cornelius
Walton, Sam
Washington, George
Wayne, John
Whitman, Walt
Whitney, Eli
Winfrey, Oprah
Woods, Tiger
Wright, Orville & Wilbur
Yeager, Chuck