CDZ The 100 Most Influential Americans

[Foxfyre]

Robert Gray, Daniel Boone, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Lucille Ball, Prince, Janis Joplin, just a few that should or could make the list. Hulk Hogan, Secretariat, Madonna off the list.

But who do you think folks are more interested in or use more for example or metaphor or look up the most? Madonna and Hulk Hogan? Or Mickey Mantle and Lucille Ball?

In that regard, Ward and June Cleaver probably outrank Lucille Ball or Mickey Mantle as the role model for a particular image.

I don't see any of them as role models. I thought it was most influential, Lucille Ball was very influential in TV, ward and June were fictitious. Micky Mantle had a huge influence on baseball.

But again, the Smithsonian list is not based or worth or importance, but rather on significance for how people perceive them. And part of that is judged on how often people use the name or symbolism, how curious they are, how often they are mentioned or googled on the internet, etc.

 

[Synthaholic]

Don't forget Al Gore, he invented the internet after all.

He never claimed he invented the internet.

Just a wingnut fantasy.

 

[Foxfyre]

Don't forget Al Gore, he invented the internet after all.

He never claimed he invented the internet.

Just a wingnut fantasy.

No, he said it. He probably didn't mean it the way it came out, but he said it.

He said: "I’ve traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
A cautionary tale for politicians Al Gore and the 8216 invention 8217 of the Internet - The Washington Post

But he doesn't belong on the list for that ill advised remark. He deserves to be on the list because of all the folks who bought into his effort to create alarm, even hysteria, re anthropogenic global warming. He is the poster child for AGW and, using the Smithsonian method of determining significance, I believe he belongs in there.

 

[Synthaholic]

Don't forget Al Gore, he invented the internet after all.

He never claimed he invented the internet.

Just a wingnut fantasy.

No, he said it. He probably didn't mean it the way it came out, but he said it.

He said: "I’ve traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
A cautionary tale for politicians Al Gore and the 8216 invention 8217 of the Internet - The Washington Post

False, Fox! You're moving the goalposts.

First you claim that he said he invented the internet, then you post a quote of him saying he created the internet.

From your own link - very first paragraph:

“Maybe they’ll bring in Al Gore, you know, the guy who says he invented the Internet, maybe they’ll fix the Web site [HealthCare.gov].”
– Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), on “Fox News Sunday,” Oct. 27, 2013

Jindal’s dig at the troubled Affordable Care Act manages also to ding former vice president Al Gore for a statement he made nearly 15 years ago. We’re not trying to pick on Jindal, but Gore did not actually say this, though people may differ about whether he came close to saying this.

As a lawmaker, Gore did play an important role in fostering public use of the Internet.​

And...

But to be fair to Gore, his statement referenced what he had done in Congress. The Internet was the commercialization of the work done at DOD, and by most accounts, Gore’s efforts had some impact. He was the prime sponsor of the 1991 High-Performance Computing and Communications Act, generally known as the Gore bill, which allocated $600 million for high-performance computing. Gore, who waged a two-year battle to get the bill passed, popularized the term “the Information Superhighway.”

The Gore legislation helped fund the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where the Mosaic Web browser was first developed by a team of programmers that included Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. While it is sometimes difficult to pinpoint the impact of federal funding, Andreessen said Gore’s bill made a difference during a 2000 interview with the Industry Standard: “If it had been left to private industry, it wouldn’t have happened, at least, not until years later.”​

But conservatives continue to trot out this lie whenever they want, because, well, they're conservatives and intellectual honesty is not their strong point.

 

[Foxfyre]

Fine Synthaholic. You see it as you see it but I will invite you to take the partisan spin to a thread appropriate for that. This one is not.

 

[norwegen]

The current issue of the Smithsonian Magazine presents their list of the 100 most significant Americans of all time. The list includes some of the Founding Fathers and a race horse, but nobody in the current Administration.

Look over the list. Do you agree? Or should some names be removed and others included?

Here's their list:

Trailblazers
Christopher Columbus
Henry Hudson
Amerigo Vespucci
John Smith
Giovanni da Verrazzano
John Muir
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
Sacagawea
Kit Carson
Neil Armstrong
John Wesley Powell

Rebels & resisters
Martin Luther King Jr.
Robert E. Lee
Thomas Paine
John Brown
Frederick Douglass
Susan B. Anthony
W.E.B. Du Bois
Tecumseh
Sitting Bull
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Malcolm X

Presidents
Abraham Lincoln
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
Theodore Roosevelt
Ulysses S. Grant
Ronald W. Reagan
George W. Bush
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Woodrow Wilson
James Madison
Andrew Jackson

First Women
Pocahontas
Eleanor Roosevelt
Hillary Clinton
Sarah Palin
Martha Washington
Hellen Keller
Sojourner Truth
Jane Addams
Edith Wharton
Bette Davis
Oprah Winfrey

Outlaws
Benedict Arnold
Jesse James
John Wilkes Booth
Al Capone
Billy the Kid
William M. “Boss” Tweed
Charles Manson
Wild Bill Hickok
Lee Harvey Oswald
John Dillinger
Lucky Luciano

Artists
Frank Lloyd Wright
Andy Warhol
Frederick Law Olmsted
James Abbott MacNeill Whistler
Jackson Pollock
John James Audubon
Georgia O’Keeffe
Thomas Eakins
Thomas Nast
Alfred Stieglitz
Ansel Adams

Religious figures
Joseph Smith Jr.
William Penn
Brigham Young
Roger Williams
Anne Hutchinson
Jonathan Edwards
L. Ron Hubbard
Ellen G. White
Cotton Mather
Mary Baker Eddy
Billy Graham

Pop icons
Mark Twain
Elvis Presley
Madonna
Bob Dylan
Michael Jackson
Charlie Chaplin
Jimi Hendrix
Marilyn Monroe
Frank Sinatra
Louis Armstrong
Mary Pickford

Empire-builders
Andrew Carnegie
Henry Ford
John D. Rockefeller
J.P. Morgan
Walt Disney
Thomas Alva Edison
William Randolph Hearst
Howard Hughes
Bill Gates
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Steve Jobs

Athletes
Babe Ruth
Muhammad Ali
Jackie Robinson
James Naismith
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Ty Cobb
Michael Jordan
Hulk Hogan
Jim Thorpe
Secretariat
Billie Jean King

Read more: History Travel Arts Science People Places Smithsonian

Were all these people Americans? For example, Christopher Columbus was Genoese, Henry Hudson was English, and Amerigo Vespucci and Giovanni da Verrazzano were Florentine.

 

[Foxfyre]

The current issue of the Smithsonian Magazine presents their list of the 100 most significant Americans of all time. The list includes some of the Founding Fathers and a race horse, but nobody in the current Administration.

Look over the list. Do you agree? Or should some names be removed and others included?

Here's their list:

Trailblazers
Christopher Columbus
Henry Hudson
Amerigo Vespucci
John Smith
Giovanni da Verrazzano
John Muir
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
Sacagawea
Kit Carson
Neil Armstrong
John Wesley Powell

Rebels & resisters
Martin Luther King Jr.
Robert E. Lee
Thomas Paine
John Brown
Frederick Douglass
Susan B. Anthony
W.E.B. Du Bois
Tecumseh
Sitting Bull
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Malcolm X

Presidents
Abraham Lincoln
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
Theodore Roosevelt
Ulysses S. Grant
Ronald W. Reagan
George W. Bush
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Woodrow Wilson
James Madison
Andrew Jackson

First Women
Pocahontas
Eleanor Roosevelt
Hillary Clinton
Sarah Palin
Martha Washington
Hellen Keller
Sojourner Truth
Jane Addams
Edith Wharton
Bette Davis
Oprah Winfrey

Outlaws
Benedict Arnold
Jesse James
John Wilkes Booth
Al Capone
Billy the Kid
William M. “Boss” Tweed
Charles Manson
Wild Bill Hickok
Lee Harvey Oswald
John Dillinger
Lucky Luciano

Artists
Frank Lloyd Wright
Andy Warhol
Frederick Law Olmsted
James Abbott MacNeill Whistler
Jackson Pollock
John James Audubon
Georgia O’Keeffe
Thomas Eakins
Thomas Nast
Alfred Stieglitz
Ansel Adams

Religious figures
Joseph Smith Jr.
William Penn
Brigham Young
Roger Williams
Anne Hutchinson
Jonathan Edwards
L. Ron Hubbard
Ellen G. White
Cotton Mather
Mary Baker Eddy
Billy Graham

Pop icons
Mark Twain
Elvis Presley
Madonna
Bob Dylan
Michael Jackson
Charlie Chaplin
Jimi Hendrix
Marilyn Monroe
Frank Sinatra
Louis Armstrong
Mary Pickford

Empire-builders
Andrew Carnegie
Henry Ford
John D. Rockefeller
J.P. Morgan
Walt Disney
Thomas Alva Edison
William Randolph Hearst
Howard Hughes
Bill Gates
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Steve Jobs

Athletes
Babe Ruth
Muhammad Ali
Jackie Robinson
James Naismith
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Ty Cobb
Michael Jordan
Hulk Hogan
Jim Thorpe
Secretariat
Billie Jean King

Read more: History Travel Arts Science People Places Smithsonian

Were all these people Americans? For example, Christopher Columbus was Genoese, Henry Hudson was English, and Amerigo Vespucci and Giovanni da Verrazzano were Florentine.

So far as I know, everybody on the Smithsonian list was supposed to be American born but on second glance, I know you are right about Vespucci, Columbus, and Hudson and you are probably right about Verrazzano. Good catch. I think something up there got by the Smithsonian proofreaders.

 

[Papageorgio]

Don't forget Al Gore, he invented the internet after all.

He never claimed he invented the internet.

Just a wingnut fantasy.

And Sarah Palin never said you could see Russia from her house.

Don't have a sense of humor? Didn't get the joke? Not in your official talking points?

What is your point?

 

[rdean]

George W. Bush was incredibly influential. The GOP, led by him, were able to single handedly cripple our military, bring down out economy, ruin our manufacturing base, destabilize the Middle East, redistribute the wealth of the nation to the top 1%, and make us the most feared nation in the world. And their influence will be felt for many decades into the future. They have made sure of no investment in our nation's infrastructure. They have convinced huge numbers of Americans that education is the wrong way to go and that we need more guns, fewer laws, fewer teachers, firemen and police. Indulged in voter suppression. Left us with tens of thousands of young Americans maimed for life costing trillions into the future.
Just the shear amount of damage and debt by that one President and the Republican Party has damaged the country so much, it may never fully recover. And the worst part is they now worship ignorance to the point of believing science is a faith and take zero responsibility for the state they left this country after Bush left office.

In fact, the only clue that even suggests they know what they did is they didn't invite their former leader to the last two Republican Conventions.

 

[Foxfyre]

What about Naked Richard and Boston Rob? They completely revolutionized the strategies on Survivor.
Boston Rob even wrote a book... with words in it.

And he was sooooooo pretty to look at. But. . . .I don't think I have ever done a google search on Boston Rob or Richard Hatch. So they probably didn't qualify under the Smithsonian criteria.

 

[Foxfyre]

Were all these people Americans? For example, Christopher Columbus was Genoese, Henry Hudson was English, and Amerigo Vespucci and Giovanni da Verrazzano were Florentine.

So far as I know, everybody on the Smithsonian list was supposed to be American born but on second glance, I know you are right about Vespucci, Columbus, and Hudson and you are probably right about Verrazzano. Good catch. I think something up there got by the Smithsonian proofreaders.

After sleeping on this, perhaps the criteria wasn't so much they had to be born here as much as the significance of their contribution to America? I'm sure Columbus and Hudson are googled quite a bit with American cities, major rivers, etc. named for them. Vespucci and Verrazzano, however, are not exactly household words and I doubt many Americans think about them much. So again their inclusion is a bit of a mystery. I wish I had access to the whole Smithsonian Magazine article.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

The word "influential" has a different connotation than were the word selected something like "important", "greatest" or some such. To influence is to play a role in how others think or react, and so in that regard I would say the single most influential American living today is Rush Limbaugh. If I were to select somebody on the extreme left, I would say Noam Chomsky. Both are in the business of manufacturing opinion, even if the former is a bit more direct in his role in doing so and the latter tries to pretend he isn't.

 

[Foxfyre]

The word "influential" has a different connotation than were the word selected something like "important", "greatest" or some such. To influence is to play a role in how others think or react, and so in that regard I would say the single most influential American living today is Rush Limbaugh. If I were to select somebody on the extreme left, I would say Noam Chomsky. Both are in the business of manufacturing opinion, even if the former is a bit more direct in his role in doing so and the latter tries to pretend he isn't.

Interesting. As was discussed several pages back, for the OP, I used the term 'influential' which was in the title of the article linked. But then when I went to the Smithsonian link, their word was 'significant' which is somewhat different than influential. Neither source used 'important'. And the Smithsonian was evaluating 'significance' by how much the people are quoted, referred to, utilized as example or metaphor, how many people do on line searches for them, etc. So using that criteria some of the names on the list make more sense. Others, not so much.

I would disagree that Limbaugh is as influential as some might think. If he was a whole bunch of people would have been elected who weren't, a whole bunch of people wouldn't have been elected who were, and we wouldn't be living with a whole lot of the legislation and policy that we live with. But in the media world, I would definitely rank him as among the most significant as he pretty much single handedly made talk radio into a national phenomenon.

Chomsky I'll have to think about but it is very interesting to think about. Most people have probably heard the name. But I would guess very few people have a clue as to who Chomsky actually is, what he is most famous for, or what he believes or promotes or would have much interest in it other as a critic of war..