After Bing Crosby’s death, family members started telling stories about how he beat his kids.
But that’s why it really isn’t wise to look at them as heroes in the first place. They weren’t. In general, the American worship of the founding fathers is ridiculous.
I like your point though… You mean JFK didn’t feed his family organic food???
Some of the stuff that has come out after Peter Sellers died paintshim as a gigantic, world class rageaholic asshole who was feared and hated by his family and associates.
I vote for Thomas Jefferson.
Does Joseph Stalin count? Kind of in the same vein as the already-mentioned Hitler.
Sure, they were despised outside of their own countries long before their deaths. But they had such iron control over their countries, their own mass media, and by extension their own reputations that they were practically worshiped until later administrations (or invading armies) let some of the truth leak out.
My recollection is that during his lifetime, JFK wasn’t widely revered outside the Catholic Church. He was liked and disliked in a manner not drastically different from our current President. Only posthumously was he regarded, for a time, as the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Aside from public knowledge of the horndogging (add me to the so-what camp), I’d say the main reason JFK’s rep has diminished over the past 40 years or so is that there wasn’t much to support it to begin with. What he has is image - the whole Camelot thing, that he and his family were in power when they were still young and beautiful, and due to his assassination he will always be young and handsome in our minds - and a pretty thin list of accomplishments.
If JFK were still alive today, he’d be 95 years old.
Who was that Olympic gold winning female athlete who later died in a car accident and turned out to be male?
A son of his first wife said this. Children of his second wife, Katherine, have never said any such thing.
According to the wiki page, 3 of his 4 sons from his first marriage said he was abusive. Gary, the eldest, made the claim in a “tell-all” book, and two of his brothers backed him up. The 4th, also the youngest, agreed that he used corporal punishment, but was not abusive.
Trofim Lysenko. Nobody really likes him anymore.
Just a guess,but I think Der Trihs is referring to Siggy’s Cocaine use,hence the “nosedive” comment.
To be honest, I never even thought of that. I figured it was about his explanations of adult behavior resulting from childhood parental relationships, which have pretty much all been trashed.
True. A lot of JFKs greatness was really the potential for greatness almost everyone saw. Whether or not he would have been actually great after two terms is another matter.
Bess Truman - Apparently an over the top anti-semite.
He did meet with Eisenhower several times. There is dispute as to how many times it happened.
A lot of his plagiarism was improperly citing source material. For instance in Wild Blue he did footnote his sources but did not use proper quotes. Not great but I still enjoy his books. And it doesn’t meet the criteria in the OP because a lot of the accusations came out before his death and he was able to try and defend himself.
Margaret Sanger. The anti-abortion crowd has tried to turn her into a raging racist.
Liberace, who won two court cases against newspapers who claimed he was gay, and then died of AIDS.
That doesn’t necessarily mean he was gay, but unless my memory is wildly innacurate, it’s extremely hard to find anybody who doubted this, then or now.