Hannibal lost. Napoleon lost. Manstein lost. Lee lost. All of them were still great generals.
Seriously I think you are having trouble seperating Lee’s cause from his abilities. The first was vile, and the second considerable.
Patton was a self-promoting blowhard who won in the context of massive and overwhelming materiel and strategic superiority of his side, and he fought a disintegrating German war machine that was past its prime after the bloodletting on the Eastern front before he even came to face it.
Powell was a competent if unexceptional commander who oversaw but did not directly lead the assault in 1991 of a superpower and powerful allies upon a third world nation with obsolescent doctrine and second-rate soviet bloc equipment. In future ages this generalship will be assessed along the lines of what’shisface who led the invasion of Grenada.
RickJay, thanks for the info. The ones I knew were Trudeau, Suzuki, Fox, Cherry, Gretzky and, oc course, A.G. Bell.
I think you might be underselling Don Cherry just a little. Maybe he shouldn’t be in the top ten Canadians ever but he’s more iconic to Canada and to hockey than Madden is to football. He;s more entrertaining as well. I used to watch some Canadian tube once in a while when I lived in North Dakota so I’ve seen Cherry and Suzuki on television in their natural habitats.
Yeah yeah, Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, all the junior-high-school name guys. So how about some truly GREAT Americans?
Ray Harryhausen: consider - history is written by the victors, and who better-placed for eventual victory than masters of stop-motion animaton?
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins: Okay, maybe the USA is indeed history’s shining beacon of freedom. And Rock & Roll is the ultimate music of freedom. So how about rock music that goes beyond unleashing the monster in the pants of America’s youth, to actually laugh until they’ve peed those same pants?
Shipwreck Kelly: Sure, Washington proudly wore his nation’s uniform while living on pickled apples and keeping hope alive at Valley Forge, but did he have to pee into a rubber cup and jam his thumbs into a metal tractor seat to prevent from plunging to his death? Well?
Larry Rivers: it takes a great American to paint Washington crossing the Delaware, revealing once and for the homoerotic subtext that up until then had been overlooked.
Any one of those fing kids who manage to fall into wells every so often*. Great Americans every one of them. We should preserve their blue thermal paper emergency room blankets next to the Star Spangled Banner at the Smithsonian.
Judy Tenuta, or any other comics from the golden age of stand-up of the late 1980’s. Do you think there was a coincidence that at the same time in history you could surf between CNN and see the Berlin Wall falling, and Comedy Central and see a brick wall with a stand up commedian kvetching about the LA dating scene?
designer Brooks Stevens, who designed the Oscar Meyer Weiner-mobile and, as if that weren’t enough, broke with millenia of tradition by bottling beer (Miller High Life) in clear glass!
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] RickJay, thanks for the info. The ones I knew were Trudeau, Suzuki, Fox, Cherry, Gretzky and, oc course, A.G. Bell.
I think you might be underselling Don Cherry just a little. Maybe he shouldn’t be in the top ten Canadians ever but he’s more iconic to Canada and to hockey than Madden is to football. He;s more entrertaining as well. I used to watch some Canadian tube once in a while when I lived in North Dakota so I’ve seen Cherry and Suzuki on television in their natural habitats.
QUOTE]
Cherry is certainly iconic, but certainly not as much as Foster Hewitt. It’s reasonable to argue that Wayne Gretzky is one of the ten greatest Canadians ever, but even that I have to stretch for (and I love Gretzky) and Gretzky is FAR more iconic than Cherry - I mean, I’m talking here about the difference between Babe Ruth and Vin Scully. Cherry’s presence on the list will, in twenty years’ time, be viewed as a bizarre anachronism.
I spelled it wrong, it’s Alan Hamel. He was kind of the Canadian Merv Griffin for a while. He hosted a daytime talkshow on CBC in the 70’s. He’s also married to Suzanne Somers and he’s the one who “managed” her out of her “Three’s Company” gig by demanding a 500% pay raise in her 2nd season. One other item of note is that he is the president of the Thighmaster company for which his wife is famously the spokesperson.
I was joking, by the way. I just said his name because I thought a Canadian would find it humorous.
Einstein is the one that really bothers me as far as being “Americans”. Mel Gibson and Ahnuld may have been born elsewhere, but they became famous in the US for doing things in the American movie industry (and politics). Einstein wasn’t only German, he became famous for things he did in Europe in concert with European scientists. Calling him an American because he retired here seems like a huge streach.
Also, it’s bizarre the list contains many actors and, so far as I can tell, no one that is known for writing. I’m willing to bet that people will be talking about Faulkner and Salinger long after Christopher Reeves is dead and gone.
Way back when, when AOL first started the nomination process, I voted for
George Washington
Franklin Roosevelt
Wilbur & Orville Wright.
If I had to make a top ten list, I’d still put George Washington first, followed by (in alpha order, rather than numeric):
Walt Disney
Thomas Edison
Henry Ford
Robert Goddard
Elvis Presley
Franklin Roosevelt
Babe Ruth
Drs. Salk & Sabin (they hated each other, and would hate being linked, but they’re a tie, as far as I’m concerned)
The Wright Brothers
Now, on some level, I KNOW there are numerous scientists, doctors, artists, politicians, etc., who’ve done more for humanity than Disney, Elvis or Babe Ruth (who were really just entertainers)… and yet, those three men definitely left legacies that continue to shape America (especially Disney & Elvis).
People I’m sorry to have left out:
Susan B. Anthony
Alexander Graham Bell (I don’t begrudge Canada or Scotland the right to claim him, as well)
Philo Farnsworth (how many forces have changed the world as much as television?)
So just in case it wasn’t clear, in Canada this program was run by CBC, (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) the federally owned and operated broadcaster.
Now personally I was a little ticked by the absence of any women from the top 10. If nothing else, I think that one could have made a stronger case for any of the Famous Five whose determination led to the Privy Council ruling that the reference to “persons” in the *British North America Act, 1867 * (British Act that is one of the most significant Canadian constitutional Acts) did include women, and therefore women were entitled to hold positions in the federal Senate.
And Don Cherry’s inclusion in the top 10 doesn’t exactly thrill me either. Although I’m not a hockey fan, I agree with the suggestion that Foster Hewitt would have been a more appropriate addition.
In case it wasn’t clear from RickJay’s, Tommy Douglas was chosen as the Greatest Canadian. And partly 'cause I’m from Saskatchewan I can’t let it go with the brief description that RickJay provided about Tommy Douglas. Tommy Douglas began as a Baptist minister spending a few years preaching in Saskatchewan during the 30s, but left the pulpit to run for the House of Commons with the CCF party (the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the precursor to the New Democratic Party a social democratic party founded in the Great Depression on left-wing principles including favouring cooperatives, and included in such concepts of unemployment insurance, universal health care, worker’s compensation and public ownership of key industries). He was an MP from 1935 to 1944, when he returned to Saskatchewan to lead the provincial CCF party.
He was premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961. During that time, Saskatchewan created critical Crown corporations: the utilities, SaskPower and SaskTel (telephones); and SGI (then SGIO, the first publicly owned automobile insurance). He also instituted the first program in Canada for free hospital care.
While doing this, the government also managed to eliminate the debt left by predecessor government and ultimately created a budgetary surplus.
Douglas then returned to federal politics upon the creation of the NDP party, becoming its first leader. He remained on the federal political scene until his retirement in 1979. In 1962, Douglas’ successor in Saskatchewan as premier, Woodrow Lloyd, introduced medicare on the principles espoused by Douglas with a province that financially was in the position to institute it. (this is setting aside the issue of current financial viabilty).
Douglas has also left a political legacy in Saskatchewan. The CCF, or its successor, the NDP has governed in Saskatchewan from 1944-1964, from 1971-1982; and from 1992 to date.
“Tommy Douglas was the most influential politician never to be elected Prime Minister. He pursued his radical ideas relentlessly until they became so mainstream rival politicians claimed them as their own. Called a communist and threatened by in-party fighting, Douglas battled hard to bring the New Democratic Party to legitimacy in its first ten years. He was often criticized for his singular idealism but through it all Douglas was undeterred, convinced that he was helping to create a better, more humane society.”
And yeah, as referenced earlier, he is Kiefer Sutherland’s grandfather.
The greatest born and bred American scientist has to be Linus Pauling, certainly the greatest of the twentieth century. He is the father of modern chemistry and made fundamental contributions across the board in biochemistry, physics and medicine. link here
Its sad that his name doesn’t appear to be on Joe Public’s list of famous scientists, its an admittedly short list but Pauling is second only to Einstein in the impact he had on twentieth century science.
I could get behind that. It’s not a widely known fact that Pauling’s group was very, very close on the heels of Watson & Crick (Wilkins and Franklin always get short shrift) in discovering the structure of DNA as well. I sometimes wish he had.
This kind of crap list makes me sad to be an American. I’m also saddened by the fact that I only knew anything about only half the Canadian list.
I think our primary export has become pop culture. It is also fast becoming our largest industry. Why couldn’t Andy Warhol have said “…everyone will only be famous for fifteen minutes”?
Incidentally, while I’m as cynical as anybody, let’s remember that we’re seeing a lengthy list of nominees, not the final Top Ten. Sure, many of the nominees are ridiculous, but not many of the worthiest contenders failed to make the cut.
So, while it’s still possible that we’ll see Carrot Top, J. Lo, Kelly Clarkson, Paris Hilton, Rush Limbaugh, Ron Jeremy, Dennis Rodman, Howard Stern, Chuck Norris and L. Ron Hubbard in the Top Ten, it’s a little too early to state categorically that the voters (and, by implication, the American public at large) are idiots. The Top Ten may yet be quite respectable.
Benjamin Franklin ALL THE BLEEDING WAY. Not to diminish Washington, Jefferson, etc., but this man was America to millions of Europeans. Yes, I know that he was a womanizer and wasn’t a good husband/dad and had his faults and hypocrisies, but he was also:
1- a major proponent and practitioner of critical thinking and intellectual curiosity (“M’sieu Electrique”)
2- a major believer and practitioner of entrepreneurial endeavors (he was the 15th child of a lower-middle class candle maker yet was able to retire in his forties and died one of the wealthiest men in the new nation)
3- a philanthropist of the most noble form: he didn’t just throw spare change at a problem, he donated his time and his energies, could have trebled his fortune by protecting his inventions (lightning rods, Franklin stove, bifocals, etc.) but decided he was wealthy enough and the people needed these items more than he needed the extra coin), etc.
4- he was witty and charming and an able diplomat while at the same time a shrewd observant of human character and hard-as-nails when he had to be- the great American compromise twixt idealism and realism
5- He was one of the first men to be unapologetically American- he lived a fourth of his long life in England and France but accepted from Jump St. that as an American he was a different creature, but not even slightly did he accept that he was a lesser creature
6- One of the early men of importance to see the evils of slavery (he freed his own slaves and headed the oldest abolition society, arguing against it not just as an injustice but as an economic idiocy [a position far more likely to get attention])
Washington was an okay general and a great politician, but Franklin’s achievements in diplomacy (loans, ships, loans, soldiers, loans, officers, loans, etc. from the French, refusal to even sit at the table with British diplomats until they acknowledged American independence, etc.) did far more to forge the nation. And, to quote one of his biographers (I can’t remember which), “Franklin is the founding father who winks at you.”)
