According to an item in my local paper the BBC are currently running a poll to find out who the British think is the greatest ever American. The poll isn't complete yet but the current top four are

4. George Washington

3. Martin Luther King

2. Abraham Lincoln

and, currently the number one greatest American of all time in the view of the British public...


...


Homer Simpson.

The final results will be in next Tuesday. I'll keep you posted if anything changes.

Non curo ! Si metrum no habet, non est poema.

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Bah! Humbug!

quote:

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
Bah! Humbug!

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Hey, I haven't voted.

I'm torn between a joint vote for Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster or a single vote for Stan Lee.

I seriously doubt that any of those would be a big draw on the British voting public though.

Non curo ! Si metrum no habet, non est poema.

Read all about my travels around the world here.
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Homer? Not Bart?

I think the Americans need to vote on the "greatest ever" Briton. Any suggestions?

Greatest ever Briton? Most enlightened people, British and otherwise, would say Churchill, hands down. However, that doesn't mean he'd top a random poll of your average un-enlightened schmo in the street.

A similar poll a few years ago to determine the greatest American had, of all people, Mark McGuire very high on the list. I'd be willing to bet that not even all the Americans on this board know that name, much less our overseas brethren. A few years back, McGuire broke the Roger Maris baseball home run record shortly before the poll was taken and then, shortly afterwards, retired from the game. A great year, yes, of course, but a great American?? Give me a break!

I'm suspicious about Homer Simpson leading Lincoln, etc in that poll. How was the question worded? Were there multiple choice answers offered? Something's fishy...

This is all part of the program to be broadcast at 2100 on BBC2 tomorrow, What the World Thinks Of America.

From the BBC's page at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/wtwta/2992070.stm

Voting on the final shortlist of 10 is now closed but return to this site at 2100 BST on Tuesday, 17 June, 2003 to find out who YOU voted as the greatest American ever.

The shortlist (in alphabetical order) is:

Bill Clinton, Bob Dylan, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D Roosevelt, Homer Simpson, Mr T, George Washington

I'm with CJ. Something is fishy here. Homer Simpson isn't even that popular here!

And, just for the record, CJ, yes, I have heard of Mark McGuire. However, from what I have heard about him, he is not all that special. Now, Michael Jordan.....(my idol!)

If any of you watch that BBC show, I would love to know what the world thinks of the U.S. Unfortunately, I probably know already.

Odd how fully half of the ten supposedly most popular Americans are found on currency:

Franklin - $100 bill
Jefferson - $2 bill (not used much, but still...)
Lincoln - $5 bill
Washington - $1 bill
Simpson - $17 bill (be careful how you pass this one.)

But Mr. T??!! Now I KNOW something's fishy. Mr. T has been pretty much a complete non-entity for the past two decades! Granted, it's been some 30 years since "Lay, Lady, Lay" and about 140 since "Four score and seven years ago..." but at least those guys were legitimately something when they were hot!

For anyone voting for Mr. T in this poll? I pity da fool!


(Anyone not recognizing that as a Mr. T impression is to consider him/herself ahead of the game.)

But you're all thinking in the wrong terms. You're thinking of characters currently known or popular in the US. While I'd grant you that Mr. T is a bit of a puzzler (although the A-Team does still get perpetual cable repeats in prime time children's slots) Homer Simpson (apart from being fictional) isn't that hard to believe. The Simpsons is still an enormously popular show over here. It shows on more than one channel every day (including the prime six O'clock slot on BBC2).

I find it hard to believe that people would actually vote for a fictional character but then again it's impossible to underestimate the intelligence of the truly dedicated TV viewer.

(On the other hand, many years ago, voting for student president at University I voted for a Dalek - so who am I to cast the first stone?)

Non curo ! Si metrum no habet, non est poema.

Read all about my travels around the world here.
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[This message was edited by BobHale on Tue Jun 17th, 2003 at 3:22.]

Drifting once again away from general language topics and into the realm of TV... so what else is new?

I won't mind seeing Homer Simpson win this poll even though, at the same time, I wouldn't attach any great significance to the honor. "The Simpsons" is, in my opinion, very probably the finest show in the history of television largely because it works on so many levels. The writing is superb, the humor is first rate and, maybe most of all, even though they're animated you care about the characters.

"Seinfeld" is often trumpeted as being TV's best show ever but talk about your Ugly Americans! Funny, yes, but there's not a one of them (the characters, I mean, not the actors) I would have in my home. But on the other hand, Bleeding Gums Murphy, a minor character on "The Simpsons," died a few seasons back and I felt bad for a week.

I'm hoping that when the time finally comes to pull the plug on this fine show that they do so with the imagination and inventiveness that have been its halmarks. Maybe killing off Bart a few shows into the last season?


Let us know when the poll results are posted.

Oh, and by the way (neatly tying this all back into a topic at least semi-related to English) the correct spelling is "D'oh!" which, as an interjection, is a shortening of "D-o-o-oh" (an extended "long O"; say the word "doe" and make it last two seconds) as made famous in its day by James Finlayson, comic foil to Laurel and Hardy.

Homer won by a landslide. Results were:

Homer Simpson 47.17%
Abraham Lincoln 9.67%
Martin Luther King Jnr 8.54%
Mr T 7.83%
Thomas Jefferson 5.68%
George Washington 5.12%
Bob Dylan 4.71%
Benjamin Franklin 4.10%
Franklin D Roosevelt 3.65%
Bill Clinton 3.53%

I am familiar with the fine work of all the rest, but Thomas Jefferson is only familiar as a name. For what is he famous?

I find the list rather baffling. Wasn't Elvis American?

... wrote the Constitution and did other great deeds.

He also owned slaves.

In recent years there has been much documentation of his having sired some children with one of the slave girls.

Some British poet who didn't care for Jefferson wrote, "He dreams of Freedom -- in his Slave's embrace."

. .. ... ..... ........ ..... ... .. .
Yes Elvis ("The Pelvis") was American. It's rumored that he had a brother named Enos ...

unsubstantiated

Jefferson, among many other things, drafted the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. He was 33 at the time, and his career and accomplishments go well beyond what can be synopsized here.

If I recall correctly, it was Madison who was the pricipal drafter of the constitution -- but the final document was heavily the product of debate and compromise.

And suddenly this becomes a Thomas Jefferson thread. Such is life on our beloved board...

Jefferson - inventor, architect, botanist, social scientist, farmer, astronomer, scholar in a dozen different fields. The Isaac Asimov of his day.

He was once referred to in a quote (wish I could recall it verbatim) regarding a dinner given for (I believe) some dozen or so Nobel Laureates of different fields, something along the lines of "At no time has so much diverse wisdom been assembled around this table since the evening Thomas Jefferson dined here alone."

Another favorite, lesser known, quote had to do with Jefferson's disbelief in meteorites, a scepticism he shared with many of the top minds of his time. Several scientists in Connecticut had published a paper confirming that they themselves had witnessed meteorites falling and landing in that area but Jefferson replied "I would rather believe that Yankee scientists lie than stones fall from the heavens."

And, yes, he did have sex, not to mention children, with Sally Hemmings who was his "property" at that time BUT, according to all reports, he was as generous and supportive of her as one might be to any other lover. Among other things, he took her to France with his daughter and introduced them both to society there. Not as proper as it could have been, yes, but then again not exactly the stereotypical image of "Massa Tom" whipping a slave tied to a post, either.

Thomas Jefferson may just be a perfect icon for this country, much of the best and some of the worst of human nature combined in a package which, I believe, earns great respect.


(And don't get me started on Benjamin Franklin!)

[This message was edited by C J Strolin on Wed Jun 18th, 2003 at 14:55.]

He'res you Nobel quote, CJ. Thanks for the memory, and the erudition.

I can only hope that this "poll" was a big joke. Mr. T, Homer Simpson, winning above Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Franklin D. Roosevelt...well, that just dusts my doilies! I think I will take my Winston Churchill vote away and vote for Monty Python!

I can see that respect for the U.S. has taken a downward turn in England. Just know that the same is not true here in the U.S. about England.

I suspect that this has more to do with anti-Americanism than with ignorance. Although I have never watched the programme I do know that the Simpsons are on TV several times a week.

The others in the poll (I assume that the poll only gave a choice of those mentioned - I did not see it) do not get anything like this exposure. Had there been a free choice I suspect that the results may have been very different. There are many more Americans than that short list (many of whose names would be unknown to most British) who could have been selected.

It is characteristic of such polls that the "short-list" is pre-selected so as to make automatic voting by telephone possible. The fault is thus of the compiler who should never have chosen a cartoon character as a candidate.

It is polls such as this that gave the exraordinary result on one occasion where people selected a semi-articulate modern football player as "the greatest Englishman of all time".

Sadly this is a relection on the modern preoccupation with ephemera rather than genuine values.

In summary, then, I suggest that this is rather a stupid poll that predictably gave a rather stupid result. I don't believe that anti-Americanism had anything at all to do with it.

Richard English

Apparently not!
It seems the poll was conducted as an on-line free vote (i.e. you could vote for anyone) and the top ten from that vote were then posted for a second vote.

At least that's what it said on the BBC web site. On the other hand we were already in the second round before I'd even heard about the poll so the sample who voted in the first round has to be suspect. Maybe it was only publicised in the advertising break during The Simpsons.


I also watched bits of the program on TV in which the result was presented (I still have the whole thing on video to watch later) and the poll was a bit of fun in a flashy but shallowly presented "serious" program about World (not British !) attitudes to the US and on the whole with the predictable exceptions of the UK, Spain and Australia) the results were pretty anti-American. In many of the questions even those three supporters were either equivocal or somewhat anti.

But I'd like to stand up for Homer. If you want to pick an icon for the American Everyman you could do a lot worse than a middle class family man who loves his wife and children, holds down a steady job, tries (mostly) to get along with folks and make a living and likes a beer in his local bar.
Why does everyone seem so down on the guy ?


Non curo ! Si metrum no habet, non est poema.

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

Witless anti-Americanism does have a current popularity, but isn't universal in the UK. We love R&B, Michael Moore, Gant, Dumb and Dumberer, the Simpsons and loads of other things, but perhaps Mr Bush is no more respected than our own leader.

In fact, Canada was surprisingly anti-American in some ways, especially over the question of trade which, apparently they believe is unfair to them with the USA having set up protectionist barriers. Something to to with timber, as I underatdn it.

Richard English

Yes, and Canada is getting under the present U.S. administration's skin, too, because they want to legalize marijuana, which will dust Bush's doilies!

Bob, I suppose you are right that Homer Simpson isn't that bad. He may even be typical of the average American, at least in an exaggerated way. I think that was why the show was so popular. Yet, this was a poll about great people, right? No one could ever say Homer was great.

Mr. T. happens to live in my area. He bought a huge mansion on the lake of the North Shore of Chicago. It had hundreds of mature trees and was a superb piece of property in a gorgeous suberb. What did he do? The week after he moved in, for no apparent reason, he had every single tree removed, stunning the community and prompting laws all down the North Shore against removing mature trees for no reason. What a complete jerk. And, he beats Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin in a poll? Oy vey! I am not having a good day!

quote:

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Originally posted by Kalleh:

Bob, I suppose you are right that Homer Simpson isn't that bad. He may even be typical of the average American, at least in an exaggerated way. I think that was why the show was so popular. Yet, this was a poll about _great_ people, right? No one could ever say Homer was _great_.

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Not great ?
Good grief what's a guy gotta do ?
He's been on stage with the Who, the Moody Blues and U2. He's been a friend to Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney and Tom Petty. He's been a submarine commander, a mountaineer, a missionary, an astronaut and an internet tycoon. He was a personal friend of President Ford.
He was briefly the henchman of a power mad megolomanic who wanted to take over the World.

And that's just in the handful of episodes I've ever seen !

Surely Homer IS a Great American.

Non curo ! Si metrum no habet, non est poema.

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

Since it is clear that Homer Simpson is now a popular American, I suggest that there should be another poll of great Americans and that it should include

Donald Duck
Mickey Mouse
Popeye
Bugs Bunny
Daffy Duck
- and Elmer Fudd.

Then we will really discover where Homer Simpson stands in the ratings!

(Oh, and let's not forget Fred Flintstone)

Richard English

Okay, Bob, I will calm down and buy the Homer vote. However, now kindly explain the love of Mr. T.?

quote:

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
Okay, Bob, I will calm down and buy the Homer vote. _However_, now kindly explain the love of Mr. T.?

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I'm afraid you've got me with that one !
Now if they'd gone for Howling Mad Murdoch from The A-TeamI could have understood it.



Non curo ! Si metrum no habet, non est poema.

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.