Thursday, December 29, 2011

Survey on "Most Admired People" Demonstrates How Easily Duped Americans Are


In yet another sign of why America is heading down the toilet, a recent Gallup poll of "Most Admired American Men and Women" placed President Hopey-Changey and his warmongering Secretary of State at the top of the list for men and women, respectively. Here is USA Today with the details:
President Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are the nation's most-admired man and woman — again — in the annual USA TODAY/Gallup Poll.

Each leads their category with 17% of votes in top 10 lists that favor the most familiar names in global politics, religion, entertainment and culture.

Linda Dinco, 62, of Latrobe, Pa., says she named Obama and Secretary of State Clinton for their "intelligence and their toughness."
Because it takes an awful lot of smarts and bravery to sit in an air conditioned office, surrounded by countless layers of security and order the most omnipotent military force the world has ever seen to wreak death and destruction on some lightly armed, brown skinned people on the far side of the planet. And lest you think I'm being unfair to Hillary by lumping her in with Obama, remember that not only did she vote for the Iraq War, she was the administration's leading hawk calling for the Afghanistan surge.

Things don't get a whole lot better from there as you move down the list. Here are the top ten for each gender:

Most admired men
1) Barack Obama

2) George W. Bush

3) Bill Clinton

4) Rev. Billy Graham

5) Warren Buffett

6-tie) Newt Gingrich

6-tie) Donald Trump

8) Pope Benedict XVI

9) Bill Gates

10) Thomas Monson
Most admired women
1) Hillary Clinton

2) Oprah Winfrey

3) Michelle Obama

4) Sarah Palin

5) Condoleezza Rice

6) Laura Bush

7-tie) Margaret Thatcher

7-tie) Ellen DeGeneres

9-tie) Queen Elizabeth

9-tie) Michele Bachmann
Personally, I would put about half of those people on my respective bottom 10 lists of the LEAST ADMIRED men and women and exactly NONE of them would make my top 1000 let alone my top 10. But then again, I already knew I wasn't exactly marching along in lock step with the program.

Easily Duped and Easily Led - a perfect motto to replace Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

9 comments:

  1. Funny one all right Bill, Obama and Bush top the poll, mad. Over here in Ireland the political party that was in power from 1997 to 2011 (Fianna Fail) and drove the economy off a cliff, got its ass kicked in this years general election. The parties that replaced it Fine Gael and Labour have been implementing the same failed policies as Fianna Fail and are now dropping in the polls. Meanwhile Fianna Fail who wrecked the economy is rising in the opinion polls again.

    It’s just the same as the Democrats and the Republicans in the US, they are both useless and they both implement the same policies and the result is equally disasterous. But people just keep jumping from one to the other and then back again. Same in Britian with the Conservatives and Labour. Tweedledum and Tweedledee. How we are ever going to get out of this mess I don’t know.

    Also nice to see Mrs Thatcher who (with President Reagan) brought about the deregulation of the financial sector that made the Great Crash of 2008 possible coming in at No 7. The mind boggles. This truly is an age of epic stupidity.

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  2. Well, this does beg the question Bill, who WOULD you put on your top side list?

    Personally, I would have to put Ron Paul very high on the list, at least because of his persistent stance against the main-stream candidates and their views and presenting a fairly consistent platform through the years.

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  3. @Crash_Watcher - unfortunately, most of the people who would be at the top of my list are already dead. Bill Hicks and George Carlin for being comedic truth tellers. Eugene Debs and Martin Luther King as political figures who defended the working class and minorities without ever compromising. Journalists like Mike Royko and Hunter Thompson who wrote the truth and never compromised. Writers like Joe Bageant and Studs Terkel who really knew what time it was.

    We need folks like those these days in the public sphere, but I look around and I just don't see any, and the few there are have been completely marginalized.

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  4. @iwe - there is a regular poster on Llamdos named dermot who is an Irishman living in the U.S. who has repeatedly blasted Fianna Fail (what an appropriate name!), and the new bosses as well. They do sound just as bad as our own corporate whores.

    I also gather that the reason Reagan is not near the top of this list is because he no longer walks among us. The whole thing is just damn depressing.

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  5. I suppose things would have to get pretty bad for an admirable person like Richard Heinberg to make the list.

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  6. It's just a contest for top monkey with name recognition. Pecking order stuff. Vote on the top monkey however they got to be top monkey. By beating up all the other monkeys? Ok then.

    Worship the powerful BECAUSE they have power (and everyone on that list holds some sort of power - money or leadership positions in a church or mostly just naked political power). It is kind of like being famous for being famous, being respected just for holding power itself even if for no other good reason in the world.

    Few or no artists on that list, no intellectuals, no scientists, no social critics and not even any politicians with integrity (like for instance Bernie Sanders and yes even Ron Paul in a way). But powerful people, oh yes, it's all about being top monkey.

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  7. Bill..., Many on your list are on mine as well. Couldn't agree with you more on this one.

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  8. "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn't exist."

    Don't vote. Don't hold debt. Take your money out of the banks. Grow your own food. Keep fit. Fix stuff.

    We have to starve the beast.

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  9. I had to LOOK UP Thomas Monson.

    Jesus wept.

    -- Dave

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