Saving Emerson, are you?
And it looks like we might have our last 3 Native Americans eliminated at a stroke, which is kind of sad but I guess not unexpected. (And I voted for two of them, so I’m definitely complicit).
I agree on Gershwin, but I keep thinking no musician belongs here in the end and no poet either. So I started putting up some small votes for the musicians at least.
Yes, let’s get selective now, having cleared away riff-raff like Jefferson and Einstein. :dubious:
In fact, 5 of my original Top Twelve are already gone. :smack:
My votes, one each:
Henry Bergh
Chief Joseph
Dwight D. Eisenhower
George Gershwin
Langston Hughes
Helen Keller
Lewis and Clark
William Seward
Sitting Bull
Orville and Wilbur Wright
J. Madison 5
Will Rodgers 2
Seward 3
Chief Joseph 1
Ralph Waldo Emerson 2
Robert Frost 2
Edgar Allan Poe 2
Sitting Bull 1
Henry David Thoreau 1
Walt Whitman 1
That was my thinking, as well.
As would I. Others I might’ve added at the outset, if I had my druthers, but didn’t:
Nathanael Greene: Revolutionary War general
George H. Thomas: Civil War general
William T. Sherman: Civil War general
David G. Farragut: Civil War admiral
Salmon P. Chase: Jurist, advocate, statesman
Edwin M. Stanton: Lincoln’s War Secretary
Herman Melville: Novelist, Moby-Dick
F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novelist, Great Gatsby
John Singer Sargent: Painter
Grant Wood: Painter
Norman Rockwell: Illustrator
N.C. Wyeth: Illustrator
Billy Sunday: Preacher
Eh. Jonathan Edwards.
… and he probably would have been knocked out in the first round, but William Jennings Bryan, as well.
Actually four if Will Rogers (officially 9/32 Cherokee) gets the boot.
Both Sunday and Edwards were great clergymen, shame they weren’t on here.
Emerson: 5
Pershing
Edison
Salk: 3
Morning update (through Sailboat’s votes):
1 Henry Bergh 15
2 Ralph Waldo Emerson 12
2 George Gershwin 12
4 Robert Frost 11
5 Helen Keller 10
6 Sitting Bull 9
6 Chief Joseph 9
6 Will Rogers 9
6 Daniel Webster 9
10 Lewis and Clark 8
10 William Seward 8
Jim Thorpe 7
Eleanor Roosevelt 7
John J. Pershing 7
James Madison 6
Upton Sinclair 6
William Lloyd Garrison 6
Thomas Edison 5
Jonas Salk 5
Langston Hughes 4
Orville and Wilbur Wright 4
John Franklin Enders 3
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 3
Edgar Allan Poe 3
Henry David Thoreau 3
Walt Whitman 2
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Jackie Robinson
Harry Truman
Harriet Tubman
Earl Warren
What the heck, I’ll vote change:
To:
Eleanor Roosevelt x5
Thomas Edison x5
Which pushes the top of the standings to:
1 Henry Bergh 15
2 Ralph Waldo Emerson 12
2 George Gershwin 12
4 Robert Frost 11
5 Helen Keller 10
5 Eleanor Roosevelt 10
7 Sitting Bull 9
7 Chief Joseph 9
7 Will Rogers 9
10 Lewis and Clark 8
10 Thomas Edison 8
10 William Seward 8
10 Daniel Webster 8
Jim Thorpe 7
John J. Pershing 7
James Madison 6
Upton Sinclair 6
William Lloyd Garrison 6
Cheerfully acknowledging that Edison was a bastard, I’ll still work to save him. I’d rather we had someone besides politicians to choose from in the endgame.
Bergh 0 (-1)
Lewis and Clark 1 (+1)
Others remain the same, which will push Edison, Webster and Seward safely (for the moment) to a tie for 11th place.
I can’t believe Bernstein and Copland went out before Jacob Gershowitz, great though he may have been. You people have no sense of perspective.
Here’s my lot:
Dwight D. Eisenhower x5
John J. Pershing x3
Lewis and Clark x2
How did Martin Luther King not make it this far?
He did. He’s still voteless.