I was doing some more couch research last night (i.e. watching TV) and came across something that I'm really not sure what to make of.
The Discovery Channel has a series that is attempting to discover who we, the people, think are the greatest American who have ever lived. From what I understand they had over 500,000 responses which resulted in 37,000 nominees. Last night's episode listed the top 100.
Now, as I said above, this whole thing has got me rather confused, so I'll just put down some of the points that immediately came to me. Kind of like a Larry King stream-of-conciousness thing. Quite frankly, I don't know how to put it all together.
The first thing that struck me was that it was hosted by Matt Lauer of NBC's Today show. My first thought was, "Nothing good can come of this", which seems to have been a good first impresssion.
The next thing, and the thing that probably got me hooked, was that number 100 was John Edwards! John Edwards? One of the 100 greatest Americans who have ever lived? I don't care what your political persuasion may be, you would have to be completely ignorant of history to believe that he would make even the top 1 million!
At that point it became obvious that the stupidity of this thing was going to be fascinating.
I also noticed that his "superior" in last year's campaign, John F. Kerry, was completely missing from the poll.
And after that came Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart! One of the top 100 Americans ever?
But I really started catching the drift after the next one: Barak Obama! Noboby even knew who this guy was a year or so ago! What has he done to earn the title of one of the 100 Greatest Americans? Apparently getting elected to the Senate against Allan Keyes (who hadn't a Frigidaire's chance in hell) was enough.
I started having real reservations about the intelligence of the American people at that point, until I noticed that the entire thing had a decided left-wing slant, which I'll get back to in a minute. For the moment I want to list some of the others who were nominated. The fact that they're even there points out that this, somehow, turned into a poll of the Left.
You'll notice that Hollywood (and the rest of the Left) is hugely overrepresented in this whole thing. But these were the ones who made me say, "Huh?"
- Lyndon Johnson
- Dr. Phil
- Brett Favre (OK, so they were drunk)
- Ellen DeGeneres
- Tom Hanks
- Tom Cruise
- Michael Moore
- Christopher Reeve
- Maya Angelou
- Madonna
- Lance Armstrong
- Oprah Winfrey
Is it just that most people with a brain have better things to do? How could anyone who is capable of anything even remotely approaching the hint of rational thought vote for these people? I don't think that it's a coincidence that these nominations are laughably stupid and that they all have Leftist ties. Except maybe Favre, but then, drunk Packers fans with access to telephones are always trouble.
You look at that list and it's "The Heroes of the Left". The fact that people would vote for any of them as one of the 100 Greatest Americans" shows me that the Left are idiots. At least the nominees who could be considered right-wing (I'll list them later) could be argued for.
And as the show went on, it quickly became even more obvious where this show was coming from.
During each short segment they had a "celebrity" commentator give their thoughts on the nominee. Here's a partial list.
- Tom Brokaw
- Al Franken (Whiner extraordinaire)
- Moby (Washed up)
- Tom Arnold
- Bob Costas
- Gloria Steinem
- James Carville
- Wendy Williams (Air America hostette)
- Star Jones (The View harpy)
- John Meacham (Newsweek editor)
And in the Right corner, wearing the Red, White and Blue trunks, we have:
- Sean Hannity
- Norman Schwartzkopf
Sean Hannity was on for about 10 seconds talking about Rush Limbaugh (we'll get to the more political niminees).
Norman Schwartzkopf spoke only of military-related nominees (i.e. Eisenhower).
On the other hand, Moby, and the rest of the Lefties, were apparently asked their opinions on all of the subjects. I think Gloria Steinam had an orgasm every time Hillary was mentioned.
Moby called any Christian who supported the war in Iraq a hypocrite. In other words, it was the Left's usual attack mode. He's a moron who writes really bad music, but the Left will use him for his opinion any time they can.
John Meacham, Newsweek's Managing Editor, had to toss in the whole "blacks as 3/5 of a person" thing. Do you really think that this guy is really so ignorant as to not know that this actually helped the anti-slavery movement?
On the one hand, it wouldn't surprise me that a person in his position on the Left wouldn't know the real reason behind the 3/5 thing (The number of Congressmen in the House is based on population in states. If all of the blacks were counted as 1 person, the slaveholding South would have had a huge advantage).
On the other hand, feigning ignorance to advance their cause is just a normal day's work for these people.
Now here's a list of people on the Left who you could actually make an argument for being one of the 100 Greatest Americans, however twisted that argument would be.
- Malcolm X
- Bill Clinton
- Hillary Clinton
- Jimmy Carter
Add them to the list above (minus Favre) and then compare it to this list:
- George H. W. Bush
- Barbara Bush
- George W. Bush
- Laura Bush
- Rush Limbaugh
- Richard Nixon
- Rudy Giuliani
- Ike Eisenhower
- Condi Rice
- Arnold Schwartzenegger
- Ronald Reagan
Those are the Conservatives nominated.
And, of course, George W. Bush had to be denigrated for "mangling" the English language.
All in all, it was an attempt to get rid of the poll a year or two ago that listed Ronald Reagan as the Greatest President. The media was shocked by that and couldn't let it stand. I'm just kind of surprised that the Discovery Channel let something this blatantly political be put on the air.
I doubt that I've captured the whole of how slanted toward the Left that it was, but all you have to do is watch it to see what I mean. It's fascinating because it's a perfect example of the propaganda of the Left.
Me? I voted for Reagan. Although it was a hard decision between him and the selfless George Washington, Reagan defeated the greatest threat that there ever was to our country by nothing more than outspending the Soviet Union on defense.
The next time you hear some smug liberal smirking about the deficit in the 80's, tell him that not only did the Democrat Congress spend all of the money that came in from tax cuts, but that part of it went to destroying a regime that had thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at our country.
Then call him a pussy just for that ad hominem effect.
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