List Making Excitement

I didn't even beat that pantywaist Lincoln?

Though admittedly addicted to the making of lists and the ranking of things (e.g. is John Cleese the funniest man alive?), I like to think that I approach the task with a certain measure of circumspectness. While there may be, for instance, an enjoyable hot dog in recent memory, I'm not one to declare any particular dog in my experience superior to all weiners in history. I could say something similar about white peaches. What I'm getting at is this--proximity doesn't equal superiority. Which brings me to The Discovery Channel and its recently conducted survey of Great Americans. The viewing public was asked to rate a list of 100 Americans, from Thomas Jefferson to Oprah Winfrey to the Wright Brothers, and rank them according to "greatness." According to the vote, the greatest person produced by this nation in 229 years of existence is (drumroll, please) Ronald Reagan. Are you kidding me? Lincoln was second! Worst of all, George Washington was fourth! George Fucking Washington, the father of the nation, didn't even medal. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton made the top ten(!). What can we conclude but that Rousseau was wrong, the will of the majority is not always correct. In short, democracy doesn't work. It's enough to make a person consider benevolent dictatorship.