Courtesy of Raw Story:
This week, Smithsonian magazine asked its readers, “How much does Thomas Paine matter? More than Harriet Beecher Stowe? Less than Elvis? On a par with Dwight Eisenhower?”
But curiously, the in-house magazine for the Smithsonian Institution decided that George W. Bush is a more “significant” figure in U.S. history than the country’s first Black president, Barack Obama, who did not make the list.
Bush appears on the magazine’s list of the “100 most significant Americans,” released in this week’s issue. According to Smithsonian, it put together the list by considering data compiled by Google engineer Charles B. Ward and Steven Skiena, a professor of computer science at Stony Brook University.
But instead of relying simply on statistics to determine the result, the magazine said it split Skiena and Ward’s results into several categories of 10 Americans apiece, then made its own determinations of who fit the bill.
Other notable entries included former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) in the list of “First Women,” Hulk Hogan in the “Athletes” category, as well as Cotton Mather, who was a key figure behind the Salem Witch Trials, under “Religious Figures.”
So there you have it. According to the Smithsonian a with hunter, a witch, and a guy who pretends to wrestle on TV are more significant than the first black man to be President of the United States of America.
I guess ending wars, fixing the economy, and bringing prosperity back to this country is simply not as significant as lying the country into those wars, destroying the economy, and making the word hate America, right?
Here is the full list, just to fan your outrage:
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
Wow, so even Charles Manson and Christoper Columbus, who never actually set foot in America, are considered more significant than Barack Obama.
Hell there is even a horse on the list.
Damn, that is cold!