I’m a sucker for clickbait.
Show me a list on Facebook and there’s a better than even chance I’ll waste some time looking it over.
Some of them are ridiculous, posted by people who think the world started when they were born. Imagine a list of the top 40 actors ever where Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington rank 1-2 and Spencer Tracy doesn’t even make the list.
So I’ve been trying to avoid them.But I saw one the other day that I couldn’t ignore. It was the 40 Most Overrated People Ever, and I needed to make sure I wasn’t on it.
Sort of egotistical, isn’t it?
Well, duh.
At any rate, the author started with three pretty good ones. Christopher Columbus (who never discovered anything), Dugout Doug MacArthur (a great general, just ask him), and Che Guevara (who sold a lot of t-shirts).
The next three weren’t as obvious. John F. Kennedy, King Henry VIII and Coco Chanel. Debatable, but not awful.
Then the bombshells started falling.
Waldo.
Waldo who?
The guy from the “Where’s Waldo” books, someone who was never really a person.
Big reach, but at least the next one was a real person.
I think.
Steve Guttenburg.
The guy who did the Gutenberg Bible?
No, the guy who made the “Police Academy” movies.I’m not sure someone can be overrated when I have never seen or heard anyone say anything good about him. He has 103 credits as any actor but has never been nominated for an Academy Award. He does have a start on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but who doesn’t?
You don’t.
Oh well. My point is that there’s no possible way Guttenberg is worth being one of the 40 most overrated people in history. He belongs on this list less than Waldo does.
Anyway, the next five are reasonable in that we’ve at least heard of them all.
Guy Fawkes, Paul Revere, Jack the Ripper, King Tut and Pythagoras.
Then came the bomb of bombs.
Garfield.
The president who was assassinated?
Nope. The comic strip cat who loves lasagna. Even less of a person than Waldo, but maybe a better actor than Steve G.
Then we get into some bigger names.
Walt Disney, Beyonce and Thomas Edison.
The next one isn’t one person.
The Kardashians.
The beginnings of their fame came from dubious places. The dad was O.J. Simpson’s friend and supposedly got rid of incriminating evidence when O.J. was arrested, and big sister had a sex tape that involved a football player using her as a urinal.
In the 20 years or so since, they had a successful reality TV show and all sorts of spinoffs. Pretty sure that at least one of them is a billionaire, so maybe they are significant enough to be called overrated.
Then we have Sigmund Freud, Oliver Cromwell and Henry Kissinger, reasonable picks all.
The next three will push some buttons.
Jesus, Ronald Reagan and Marilyn Monroe.
Tough to include the Supreme Being on a list like this, although I suppose after Waldo and Garfield, anything is possible. I suppose Reagan is reasonable, although much of the adulation for him has been shifted to Donald Trump (who inexplicably did not make the list). As for Monroe, she only lived to be 36 and was more of a tragic figure.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Muhammad and Abraham Lincoln.
The one that offends me here is Lincoln. He was perhaps our greatest president and a great man as well.
Robert E. Lee, Cleopatra, Andrew Jackson and Elvis are the next group.
The mythology surrounding Lee from the Lost Cause types has made him amazingly overrated, particularly with some of the new discoveries about his life. Ditto with Jackson, who at one time was considered a near-great president but now ranks with Woodrow Wilson as presidents who were vicious racists.
Cleopatra, who knows?
Elvis, comme ci, comme ca.
It’s tough to argue with the next four. King Arthur was actually fictitious, William Wallace might as well have been, Ayn Rand was a horrible writer and Nostradamus? Well, he never really had much to say.
The final five are a mixture of good and bad.
George Washington, John Lennon, Richard the Lionhearted, Blackbeard and Mother Theresa.
Whew! What a relief.
That I didn’t find my own name on the list, or my friends Mick Curran, Bill Madden or Steve Carter?
Yep, it’s a relief.
I might be overrated, but not as much as Waldo.