To Festus and **mks57 **list of dishonorable “notables” I would add John Wilkes Booth who I see as trumping all of the above including Agnew. Both the Surratts, David Harold, Michael O’Laughlen and George Atzerodt were all born and more or less raised here too – whether they **all **beat Agnew I am not saying but of the true actual Lincoln conspirators before the deed, only Alabaman Payne/Powell was not from the Old Line.
Roger B. Taney – Supreme Court Justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision deserves a dishonorable shout out for that too.
Not since the OJ trial. OJ and everyone else involved with that trial, down to and including the prosecutor’s hair dresser, created a whole new class of embarrassment that may never be exceded. The only one who’s even come close (and who was also a Californian, by the way) was Dick Nixon. OK, maybe that Bill and Monica episode was also up there embarrassment-wise, but definitely in third place.
Tonya was much more embarrassing than Packwood. No question
Oh, and as for Washington state, Ted Bundy comes from there.
I’m having trouble for reason a, too. If you live in a state that is so diverse, you know that no one person can represent it by doing something embarrassing. As for cities, I don’t know how you can say an area of 12 million people is “embarrassing,” considering the diversity. Overall, Los Angeles is not what Woody Allen would have you think.
As for Iowa, I’d be embarrassed that such a small population thinks it should have such a large influence on presidential elections. Who do they think they are? The voice of the nation? Hardly.
Zoe, I don’t know. I have trouble seeing Andrew Jackson as a complete scoundrel. I don’t pretend he was what modern Americans would consider a moral man, any man who would claim that his two great regrets in life were: “I did not hang Calhoun and shoot Clay,” is someone I will speak up for.
He was a racist bastard, a hard man, and unforgiving to a degree that horrifies me. He also was a staunch champion of the poor, and saw the issues of his day more clearly than many more respectable figures of the day.
For that matter, assigning all the blame for The Trail of Tears to Jackson is a cop-out. The forced removal of the Indians from their land would never have happened simply because Andrew Jackson decreed it. And preventing it would have taken the use of the Army and deadly force. Continentalism was still a real factor in national politics, and Manifest Destiny - something I see as the logical successor of Continentalism - was only about 10 years in the future at that time. What happened was something that was done by Americans, not just any single American. Even those who spoke out against it were unwilling to consider the measures that would have been necessary to prevent the relocation of the Indians.
Of course, what’s interesting to me, is the possibility that had Jackson lost at New Orleans, that would have killed Continentalism, and left Manifest Destiny stillborn.
I’d still like to see someone else’s face on the $20 bill. Whether Andrew Jackson is solely to blame or not, he is still the person who was Commander-in-Chief when it happened, and so accrues the credit and blame for it. I just don’t like that so many people want to paint Andrew Jackson as solely a villian.
Don’t forget our Congressman from the Sahara Desert district, Representative Steve King. Here is a man who was genuinely born 150 years too late. While not necessarily a national player he is proudly carrying on all the traditions of both the Know Nothing Party and the Country Club Republicans.
Our current governor, however, has lots of potential, he being really big, not too bright and completely dominated by a pit bull lawyer wife. Give him time and he could become a major league doofus.
Another Connecticut politician who is appropriate for this list is Philip Giordano, former mayor of Waterbury, who sexually abused two girls (provided to him by a woman who was the mother of one girl and the aunt of the other). Giordano, as well as a couple of previous mayors of Waterbury, took bribes (and it’s the hometown of John Rowland, whom I mentioned above). I’m happy to say that I’m not from Waterbury.
And so does that of Don King, another inductee in my native Buckeye State’s Hall of Shame.
Sure, the kids know all about Maurice Clarett, but I’ll go old school in the Ohio State football division by bringing up Woody Hayes.
And speaking of sports, my current home of Indiana is known by my mom (not exactly the world’s biggest college-basketball maven) as “the place where that awful Bobby Knight was coach”.
Although I’ve never lived in Georgia, I can’t resist adding the name of Lester Maddox to that state’s candidates. Also, my mother tells me of the days when her father wore an “Oust Bilbo” button, inspired by Mississippi’s U.S. Senator Theodore Bilbo. After you read the article, I think you’ll agree that Grandpa was more than justified in his stance.