For the OP, I’d add to the votes for JFK. For the reasons listed up thread, and especially the way that he’s made a hero for the PT-109 incident. After the collision, yes, he acted with courage and determination. Before the collision, he, the coxwain, or both, had to be asleep at the wheel. Which makes the loss of the boat and lives due to negligence.
Any character in Shakespeare’s histories. (Please note, I’m making a differentiation there, because you can’t overstate Shakespeare’s impact on modern literature.) They were either demonized or lionized.
Gregor Mendel - he never published, and even so it’s pretty well surmised that he cherry-picked his data, too.
Gallileo - he was a terrible egotist, a plagiarist, and a bully. He made many assertations he couldn’t prove, which is what actually got him in trouble with the Inquisition - had he been able to prove his theory, he’d have gotten off scott-free. He was also set up for that trial, in part, because he stole one man’s work, and accused another of making up his data. Grassi and Scheiner, who were the two Church astronomers who brought up the charges when Gallileo advocated the heliocentric theory in print, had very good reason to want to do Gallileo a bad turn after he’d abused them.
Gotta also go with Reagan. Absolutely ran large parts of the country into the ground with ethics issues all over the place. Now that the crows have come home to roost, “Time” magazine and such still are trying to fix blame on everyone but him.
Princess Di was a cynical self server who thought nothing of concoting the most venomous lies against people who had not only not done anything to harm her but had actually put themselves out to make her feel welcome and help her with her emotional problems most of which seem to have been as a result of her self pity and her pique when anyone else had the effrontary to displace her as the centre of attention .
She tried to kill her unborn baby by throwing herself down stairs in an attention seeking tantrum,she claimed to have been desperately in love with Charlie though she had only ever met him once before their marriage when she was fourteen(and lets face hes no Johnny Depp lookswise)
She asked for everyones pity at the hurt she felt at Charlies adultary but quite happily committed the same offence with married men herself.
When a wealty married mans wife started to receive silent "menacing "type calls the police investigation discovered that they originated from her mobile .
An attempt to hush this up was unsuccessful and it was further revealed that she had been "stalking "the husband even though he had made it clear to her that her attentions werent welcome.
(his name was I believe Goldsmith but I could be mistaken)
She arranged secret meetings with journalists where she would present herself as a victim of the Windsors bullying and being cold shouldered by them , in return the stories were to appear in the press with the source being being attributed to “concerned friends of Diana” which gave her sick ,completerly unfounded fabrications a spurious impartial authenticity .(Not to mention the public admiration for her martyr like suffering in silence when all these dreadful things were supposedly happening to her)
As to her being harassed by the paparazii she her self phoned the media pretending to be an anonymus member of the public to tell them of a “secret” nightime visit to Great Ormond St hospital ,unfortunatly they recognised her mobile number.
Also she regulary phoned her friends in the press to let them know where to find her and Dodi on their boating holiday.
A truly unpleasant person but an excellent manipulator of public opinion ,she’d have done well as a politician .
M. Tullius Cicero: His skill at style has resulted in him being regarded as a great intellectual mind, when, in practice, it was the fact that himself and those like him couldn’t think of solutions to the problems of the late Roman Republic that lead to his downfall.
Harry Truman: His reputation as a great President has always struck me as being odd, given both the large flaws within his Presidency (his domestic record, for a start) and the rather superficial things for which he is praised for (being an ass to music critics).
Paul Revere always stuck out in my mind. He rode 19 damn miles, which pales in comparison to Israel Bissell who rode 350 miles (killing a horse or two along the way) to carry the same warning of war. The “press” Revere received being of course the immortal poem by Longfellow, without which probably nobody would know Revere’s name today.