Leave the Lists to VH1!

The Discovery Channel's list of the 100 Greatest Americans has been winnowed down to five, as of yesterday.

George Washington
Abraham Lincoln
Martin Luther King Jr.
Benjamin Franklin
and...
Ronald Reagan

First of all, let's just pretend that Ronald Reagan doesn't have a chance to be voted Greatest American, because I believe I read somewhere that this is the sixth sign of the apocalypse.

Let's pretend instead that Matt Lauer had announced a more deserving candidate like say, George Wallace or Spiro Agnew.

No, even better, someone FAR more deserving like Thomas Paine, Walt Whitman (a writer!), Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Jonas Salk, Mark Twain, Jackie Robinson, Cesar Chavez, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Tennessee Williams, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Vint Cerf, Robert Kahn, Francis Crick, James Watson, Henry Ford, Philo Farnsworth, Thelonious Monk, Jim Thorpe, Walt Disney, Lucille Ball, Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark or Nikola Tesla.

Or hey, how about someone cool like Richard Pryor or Hunter S. Thompson?

...No, I'm serious. Thompson deserves it solely on the basis of his obituary for Richard Nixon.

All of these people should have made the Top 100 (other than Agnew and Wallace) rather than people like George H.W. and George W. Bush, Barbara Bush, Laura Bush (maybe the former librarian would like to cede her spot to Walt Whitman or Tennessee Williams?), Tom Cruise, Oprah, Michael Moore, Dr. Phil, Rush Limbaugh, Mel Gibson and Billy Graham. Oops, did I mistakenly click over to the Top 100 American Egomaniacs List?

And from whence came Brett Favre, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Michael Jackson, Tom Hanks, Rudy Giuliani, Ellen De Generes, Hillary Clinton, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Jackie O, Madonna, Donald Trump, Pat Tillman, Joseph Smith, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Richard Nixon!!!, Martha Stewart, Sam Walton, Christopher Reeve, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice?

I'll also have to take issue with the inclusion of many others like Marilyn Monroe, Maya Angelou, Neil Armstrong (enough with the pilots and astronauts!), Albert Einstein (Is he German, Swiss or American?), Clint Eastwood, Bill Gates (maybe Cerf & Kahn instead, at least they didn't spend the last decade impeding progress), Lyndon Johnson, Audie Murphy and Rosa Parks (better to give her spot to Ida B. Wells).

Now that I've voiced my objections to 43 of the 100 that the Discovery Channel picked, I'd like to say congrats on picking 57 decent candidates. In school we used to call that a failing grade.

Or as Top Ten Greatest American George W. Bush used to call it...reason to celebrate.