…when they didn’t deserve it? And vice versa - who’s had the worst press when you think they deserved better?
Off the top of my head, Mother Teresa is generally seen as being an all-round saintly person, while there are some unpleasant details to her story.
Harry Flashman.
Hitler.
Been dead now over 50 years and still has a cable channel named after him. I ain’t got no “E” channel for Elvis, now do I?
Oh, yeah. I do. Eh, Goebbels did ok for only havin’ one ball and all.
When you get to the end of your rope, hang yourself.
Yay, Harry! my personal hero.
FDR. George Washington.
I love Shakespeare, but it’s interesting to read some of his plays (especially the histories) and pick out the parts that are most likely more propaganda than fact. For instance, King Richard III might not have been nearly as evil as portrayed in his titular play, but historically he was part of a line that was deposed in favor of the Tudors, the ruling house at the time that the play was written. And Henry V’s (outnumbered) men suffer a ridiculously low number of casualties - something like 25 or 30 - at the Battle of Agincourt, while the French lose thousands. But these exaggerations, aside from heightening the drama of the plays, were probably ostensibly employed so as not to draw charges of libel or treason against the monarchy, and to make everything English, Tudor, and/or Protestant look darn good.
The way I see it, Mother Teresa was a miserable excuse for a human being, but she got great press.
Wait, there’s a Hitler channel? You’re kidding right?
This is also interesting. What’s the scoop on that?
I take back FDR and George Washington. They did deserve the good press. Missed that part.
But I do think Kennedy was a mediocre president who made a shrewd career move by becoming asassinated. Not that much of substance was accomplished during his term. It was Johnson who instituted the social programs.
On the off chance this isn’t a whoosh on my part–the History Channel (I think it’s available on basic cable, but I’m not sure) has been affectionately nicknamed ‘the Hitler channel’ for all the World War II-related programming it does. It is not, in fact, actually a channel dedicated to Hitler. 
(That is an awesome username, by the way…) Also to get patronage and favours–it was all about the money.
I would say something like that too, but I didn’t really want to start an actual debate/slanging match.
I always thought Magic Johnson got way to good press when it came out that he had AIDS. Dude slept with a bunch of women, gets a deadly STD and he becomes a hero? Dayum!
He didn’t become a hero by getting AIDS. He became a hero by being honest about it and turning it into something constructive.
I don’t know enough about the period to independently have an opinion on the matter (so don’t jump on me if you disagree!), but I’ve heard rumblings in certain quarters that Nixon’s bad press was out of proportion to his crimes, and has overshadowed some of his greater accomplishments (like opening up China).
The biggest problem is supposed to be the fact that the clinics she set up weren’t actually very helpful, other than they helped people die more comfortably. There were also some questions as to what she did with all the money she received, as well as the source of said money. She was an extremely conservative Catholic, so she was against abortions and publicly spoke out about it - even to women who’d been raped, she would skip the sympathy and get straight to the “don’t kill your child” bit. Also I think she spent a lot of money on her own private healthcare, which makes her a bit of a hypocrite.
How about Julius Caesar? A coldly calculating man in his marriage and political dealmaking, Caesar was undeniably successful as a conqueror. But bear in mind he wrote his own “press releases;” his writings constantly mentioned his own name in the third person and attributed all successes to Caesar’s shrewdness and powers of inspiration. His writings, in an era without news media, were treated like factual reporting.
Rome was a bad neighbor. Roman armies issued forth almost annually, more or less just because they could, not necessarily in response to provocations. Rome recognized no politics except its own, accepted no equals, and had absolutely no qualms about stabbing people until they submitted to virtual (often actual) enslavement. JC was a gifted exporter of this institutional violence.
Eventually his popularity, fueled by his successful conquests but also his constant and eloquent self-praise, enabled him to (effectively) overthrow the Roman Republic as Dictator-for-Life. The people who stopped him are remembered as villains in the works of the modern world’s greatest playwright, Shakespeare.
Two thousand years later, even people who admire that republic, and claim to hate dictatorships, adore him.
That’s some great press.
Sailboat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZCNrf0IH_U Washington not over rated.
Hard to beat the Mother Theresa for overblown praise, but here are my nominees:
Columbus: Nowadays probably seen as worse than he was (I mean, I don’t think he’s purely evil like Cortez and Pizarro), but that’s a reversal of 500 years of great press.
Custer: Same as Columbus, but make that 100 years. His arrogance and recklessness were made out to be charming.
Ronald Reagan: A president so bad at his job that, at the time, I couldn’t imagine worse (now I can). He’s credited with destroying the Soviet Union; Iran-Contra seems to be a minor footnote that underlings carried out while he was napping.
Charles Lindbergh was really little more than an overblown daredevil. He flew across the Atlantic solo. So what? Should have been famous for maybe three days tops but he managed to parlay it into fortune and influence.
Napoleon is surely a candidate. Responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths.
I would vote for John F. Kennedy…his father (Joe Kennedy) paid journalists big bucks to write nice stories about his son. He paid off lots of people, and the good press is partially why we have such a favorable view of JFK today-who was really a mediocre president with few accomplishments.