# 'Great' people who were total A-holes **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 7, 2011, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867 "2011-10-07T04:22:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/81 "2011-10-10T15:52:50Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > Maybe, like Rahm Emmanuel, he was good at politics through hook and crook and JFK wanted him both close to and under him. I just assumed that Kennedy thought about LBJ the same way LBJ thought about J. Edgar: “I’d rather have him on the inside pi$$in’ out that on the outside pi$$in’ in.” And about RFK, I don’t have anything to add other than it was a suprise to me to find out just what kind of of temperament he had. He always struck me as being phenomenally wimpy, which was about 180º out of kilter. He was a serious hard-a$$ and played serious hardball. ---
**Author:** ![SeldomSeen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@SeldomSeen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeldomSeen)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/82 "2011-10-10T16:42:25Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I think you mean “How that asshat ever became vice-president…” > > How he became president is clear as day, but how he became VP isn’t. **Quote: MichaelEmouse** > [@](#): > > Maybe, like Rahm Emmanuel, he was good at politics through hook and crook and JFK wanted him both close to and under him. Well, he did win election in his own right, after serving out Kennedy’s term, but I suspect **MichaelEmouse** got it right. Johnson _was_ shrewd and very effective at swinging votes his way, although his means were often less than stellar. If he’d been subject to the scrutiny that holders of high office are today, he probably never would have been elected to national office in the first place. SS ---
**Author:** ![SeldomSeen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@SeldomSeen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeldomSeen)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/83 "2011-10-10T16:51:23Z")
> [@Namkcalb](#): > > I would like to add the Quaker founder, George Fox to the list. He was almost always drunk, he was extremely judgemental, he violently distrupted non-Quaker Christian services and he even tried to convince Oliver Cromwell to invade Turkey and spread Quakerism by the sword. Not challenging you on this, but do you have a cite? That seems pretty much at odds with everything I’ve read about Geo. Fox. Although I’m sure that as a religious leader his biography may have been sterilized a bit…wouldn’t be the first time. SS ---
**Author:** ![Reloy3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c68b51/32.png) [@Reloy3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reloy3)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/84 "2011-10-10T20:17:22Z")
I would nominate Beethoven - Master Composer but his personal life does smack of anal-cavityness. Took his (admitedly drunken and abusive) father’s pension; would not call his brother by his name (because it was the same as his father’s); claimed his mother was unfaithful, changed his birthdate, and said he was the bastard son of the Emperor; after his brother died, used his political connections to have his nephew, Karl, taken from his mother, locked him in a prison-like school, attempted to have the boy’s mother arrested when Karl ran away to be with his grieving widowed mother, all leading to Karl’s attempted suicide. On top of that, he was boorish, dirty, bitter, smelly, drunk and altogether paranoid and unpleasant. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/85 "2011-10-10T21:00:38Z")
> [@No\_umlaut\_for\_U](#): > > Actually, he owned a newspaper, the [Dearborn Independent,](http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/ford1.html) and the reprinted said articles as the International Jew. Hella lot to apologize for.:dubious: I also think Mr. Ford did a fair amount to popularize and distribute copies of _The Protocols of the Elders of Zion_, in addition to his work with the Dearborn Independent. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/86 "2011-10-10T21:45:28Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > Emily Murphy was the first woman magistrate in Canada and the British Empire and was one of the “Famous Five,” the group of five women whose lawsuit against the Government of Canada was responsible for getting women recognized as “qualified persons” able to sit in the Senate, establishing a crucial precedent both for women’s rights in Canada and for constitutional law (the living tree doctrine). > > She also published a series of increasingly fanatical editorials in which she argued that Blacks and especially Chinese were introducing marijuana into Canada in order to sap the white race and seduce white people into debauchery and moral weakness. She was almost single-handedly responsible for getting marijuana outlawed. It was to the point that many people, even at the time in the 1920s, remarked on her extreme degree of racism. Heh I read a book written by her on the topic based on those articles called _The Black Candle_. [http://www.manybooks.net/titles/canuckjother10black\_candle.html](http://www.manybooks.net/titles/canuckjother10black_candle.html) Very interesting and bizzare stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Labrador\_Deceiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7c8e57/32.png) [@Labrador\_Deceiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labrador_Deceiver)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/87 "2011-10-10T22:24:02Z")
> [@PandaBear77](#): > > Tonight while playing bar trivia I learned that Andy Griffith broke his right hand on 4 different occasions by punching the wall during temper tantrums on the set of The Andy Griffith Show. He is basically hated in the Wilmington, NC area. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/88 "2011-10-11T00:22:03Z")
> [@Labrador\_Deceiver](#): > > He is basically hated in the Wilmington, NC area. Why? ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/89 "2011-10-11T00:28:35Z")
> [@](#): > > I was trying to be with you, since I’ve known (and know of) a lot of assholes. But when you expounded on RFK I was like Hold up and whoa. When Robert was shot in the head, laying on the floor in the kitchen of that hotel, straining to hold his head up he asked, “Is everybody else alright?” > His assasination is what broke my cherry. > I was “around” when JFK was assasinated. And Marten Luther King. I was sickened and troubled. But I didn’t “give up, and then be born again out of the ashes” until Robert was killed. A man who convinced his brother (the President) to back his pc rhetoric with substance. > I’ve read, “You can either paint with passion, or you can live with passion. But you can’t do both.” God bless those who disagreed. I remember my mother saying “1960s Bobby Kennedy was all very well and good, but I remember earlier Bobby Kennedy, when he was Roy Cohn’s lapdog, hunting down Commies and Jews and gays.” RFK did whatever was politically expedient, and if it also happened to be the right thing, great. That being said, I think the affair with Marilyn Monroe is an urban legend. He would \*never \*risk his political career for sex, unlike his brother. Oh, and I don’t know if anyone considers \*\*Coco Chanel \*\*“great” in the first place, but she was also a Nazi whore who should have been hanged after the war. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/90 "2011-10-11T04:20:44Z")
Bing Crosby beat the living shit out of his kids. Bess Truman was a racist bitch. ---
**Author:** ![Labrador\_Deceiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7c8e57/32.png) [@Labrador\_Deceiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labrador_Deceiver)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/91 "2011-10-11T14:44:22Z")
> [@TreacherousCretin](#): > > Why? Short version: He was a gigantic ass when he lived there. He abused almost every personal and professional contact he had around town. I honestly don’t know of a single resident of that city who can say one nice thing about the guy. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/92 "2011-10-11T14:50:35Z")
Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, is widely portrayed as a racist and eugenist by the anti-abortion crowd. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/93 "2011-10-11T15:08:06Z")
Not so much an asshole as a pain to be around sometimes, but José Antonio Samaranch (who was president of the International Olympic Committee for what seems like forever) was one of those hyperactive guys who happen to have found a job where they can work in hyperfocus. He slept very little and always wanted things for “the day before yesterday”. I read an interview with his wife where she said that separate bedrooms had been an essential factor in their marriage, because it allowed her to sleep; trying to share a bedroom with Mr “it’s 3am and I just had the greatest idea ever” would have been a royal pain in the ass, not to mention eyes, ears, back, shoulders… I’ve also heard talk that he was a womanizer, but if his wife didn’t mind I don’t see why should I. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/94 "2011-10-11T15:15:14Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > Assholeishness doesn’t negate the greatness. Then again, greatness doesn’t excuse the assholeishness. > > I kinda wonder about the “victims” of the these assholes. We all know/are related/worked with/are victims of some raging asshole somewhere sometime. But most of us don’t have wander through society with daily reminders of how great society thinks the asshole you experienced is. My blood pressure just goes up thinking about going through that. Shrug, the immense majority who knew my Gramps from Hell are divided in two groups: those who never saw his dark side, and who can gush about him for hours, and those who did, who will give me these sad-puppy looks and say something like “uh, you… you must know what he was really like, I guess?” You learn to live with it; when the dark side is real extreme, those who haven’t seen it wouldn’t believe it exists, and that this great man they absolutely adore had it. Those who have encountered similar blotches before grow very efficient assholedars. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/95 "2011-10-11T22:15:31Z")
Mother Theresa - friend of dictators, more interested in saving souls than providing medical care, and herself demanding top-of-the-line treatment when ailing. Or so I’ve heard. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/96 "2011-10-11T23:03:53Z")
> [@CairoCarol](#): > > Mother Theresa - friend of dictators, more interested in saving souls than providing medical care, and herself demanding top-of-the-line treatment when ailing. Or so I’ve heard. Oh, well, \*that \*evil fanatical bitch–most of us don’t consider her “great” in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/97 "2011-10-11T23:08:19Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, is widely portrayed as a racist and eugenist by the anti-abortion crowd. Their dissing of her is ironic in a way because while she _was_ a eugenist and would almost certainly be racist by modern standards she was also [punchline] anti-abortion. One reason she was so pro birth control was to end the need for abortions. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/98 "2011-10-12T00:59:49Z")
A too-long list of those whom we admire who were anti-Semitic: including Voltaire, US Grant, H. L. Menken, T.S. Elliot… “So what exactly is a ‘kike?’” “Any Jewish gentleman who has just left the room.” ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/99 "2011-10-12T01:12:56Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > A too-long list of those whom we admire who were anti-Semitic: including Voltaire, US Grant, H. L. Menken, T.S. Elliot… > > “So what exactly is a ‘kike?’” > > “Any Jewish gentleman who has just left the room.” Voltaire? Sure, he made fun of the Jewish religion but he also made fun of the Christian relition (the latter rather more so, I understand; he was a smartass). What did he say that was anti-semitic, as opposed to taking the piss out of a religion and being irreverant towards the reverential? I’m not saying it’s not possible but I’d like to know what he said to that effect. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867/100 "2011-10-12T01:35:18Z")
There’s a fine line between taking the piss and vile hatred, and you and I migh draw it at different latitudes. A Google search of “Voltaire Jews” will yeild plenty of quotes by him that he must have known would stoke as many murderous hearts as tickle funny bones. Of course Voltaire’s first anti-allegiance was to Mother Church. But he blamed Judaism for creating the ugly mess in the first place. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-people-who-were-total-a-holes/598867.md?page=6)