Most Overrated Events/People of the 20th Century

[sparten]

Here's one guys list
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/overrate.htm

The Cold War (1949-87)
It's defining characteristic is that there was no war, so when we start listing the major events of the Cold War, we're talking about the major events of a non-event. Can you get any more Zen than that?

Consider, for example, the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviets attempted to plant nuclear missiles in Cuba, but the US imposed a blockade and threatened to attack if the Soviets didn't stop their shenanigans. The world hovered on the brink of a nuclear showdown, but the Soviets backed down, so the world wasn't destroyed.

By my count that's six non-events in a row:

"Attempted to plant nuclear missiles" means that they didn't.
"Imposed a blockade" means that the Soviet ships didn't go to Cuba.
"Threatened to attack" means they didn't.
The Soviets didn't challenge the blockade...
... or finish installing nuclear weapons.
The world wasn't destroyed.



Martin Luther King, Jr. (fl.1955-68)
Look, I like having an extra day off in January as much as anyone, but have you ever noticed how the memory of the Reverend Doctor is solemnly trotted out whenever anyone wants to wrap themselves in an aura of self-importance? People Magazine's Most Intriguing People of the Century slaps him onto the cover along with Elvis, Jackie and Diana. Encarta plays me a clip of his dream speech whenever I log on. Time to give it a rest.

When you sit down and think about it, it's difficult to determine what exactly King did to deserve this sainthood. Yes, he coordinated several protest campaigns, but these campaigns came after Booker T. Washington had struggled to create an educated black middle class, and after Thurgood Marshall had convinced the Supreme Court to outlaw segregation. Basically, the economic and legal underpinnings had already been kicked out from under segregation by the time the national news media woke up and saw that there was a problem, so to cover their mistake, the media now pretends that the civil rights movement didn't begin until King's bus boycott in 1955.

Sure, King's rallies helped pressure Congress into passing the Civil Rights Act, but if that's such a big deal, why not eliminate the middle man and make the actual passage of the act one of the top 10 events of the Century.




Clinton & Monica (1998-99)
Once upon a time, the United States saved impeachment as a last resort for removing a president who had become a danger to the republic. Now we use it to trash a president who has become a mere embarrassment to the republic. This sets a bad precedent because, let's face it, how many presidents aren't an embarrassment to the republic?

If the mess had simply remained a scandal, I'd ignore it. After all, half the point of politics is to distract us from real issues by smearing people who disagree with us, but as soon as Congress brought out the big guns, we crossed the line into overreaction.




Any President of the United States except Roosevelt
The American political system has a knack for weeding out both the extraordinarily bad and the extraordinarily good, leaving us with the extraordinarily ordinary. It culls the whiners, the madmen, the lazy and the loners, and drives out the easily angered, the easily depressed and the easily confused. Every four years, our system offers us a choice of two overpowering mediocrities, and should one of these hyperordinary presidents start to show any sign of rising above their mandated blandness, we've got a hungry press and a cranky Congress to whittle him back down.

I don't understand why Americans bemoan the lack of leaders in this country. Hitler was a leader; Napoleon was a leader; so was Lenin. The US has had 200+ years of relative peace and prosperity because we avoid leaders and place non-entities over us instead. The only presidents of the 20th Century to have even slightly interesting personalities were Kennedy, Nixon and Clinton -- and look at what happened to them (shot, resigned and impeached)

I excluded Franklin Roosevelt because

He was elected to twice as many terms as any other president, so just by default he had twice the influence.
He was on hand when the two biggest crises of the 20th Century hit, so he got a chance to show his stuff -- proving that the flip side of "not that good" is "not that bad, either". The mediocrities that we elect know how to keep their heads and listen to advisers.



The Berlin Wall (1961-89)
Berlin: the grim and lonely front line in the Cold War.

What exactly happens on the front lines of a non-event? Border guards glare at one another; they patrol the barbed wire perimeter, and carefully check your papers before waving you through.

Big deal; they do that on the Canadian border.

Can anyone explain the importance of the Wall without using the word "symbolic"?




The Battle of Dunkirk (1940)
In the words of Sir Winston Churchill: "Wars are not won by evacuations" and "A successful retreat is not a victory."

During the war, Dunkirk was treated as a major symbolic victory, but now that the war is long over, let's admit that it was a total, unmitigated defeat. The only reason that the British managed to save their skins was that Hitler needed his full army to concentrate on crushing the French.

So basically, the much maligned French army took the fall, while the spunky, defiant Brits fled.



The Seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran (1979)
For over a year, the United States acted like some obsessive and pathetically dumped boyfriend. Every morning, we woke up and stared unshaven into the mirror with the sad realization that today we were beginning Day 42 without Debbie.

There are times that I simply cannot believe that we, as a nation, willingly allowed ourselves to be paralysed by this -- and let's be clear about this: we were paralysed. This was the only time in the 50-year history of American television that the network news actually counted the days from an event.

Four hundred and forty of them.

Sure, some international crises are important and require action. The German annexation of the Sudetenland, the Soviet blockade of Berlin and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait all had tangible, international repercussions if they were allowed to stand, but was it really necessary to drop everything over some hostages? I mean, worst case scenario -- the hostages were all massacred -- tragic, yes, but would that really have altered the global balance of power?

We forgot the first rule of international diplomacy: Nations have as much credibility as their armies can enforce or their economies can produce, but terrorists only have as much credibility as you give them.




Charles Lindbergh flies across the Atlantic (1927)



1919, May: the first flight across the Atlantic, island hopping along the southern route.
1919, June: the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic.
1920: several firsts connecting alliterative cities: Cairo to Capetown, New York to Nome.
1923: pioneer aviators flew non-stop across the US.
1924: first flight around the world.
1927: Lindbergh's Atlantic jaunt.
Why the big deal? Why do we know his name, and not the names of his predecessors?

Was it because he made a solo flight? Sure, that's brave and all, but historically, flying solo was a dead end. The real future of air travel was in moving larger and larger groups by plane, so Lindbergh's crossing the ocean alone was actually a step backward.




Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929-94)
Her sole claim to fame is that she slept with John Kennedy -- like that's hard to do. I mean, if she had nailed a couple of popes or something, that would be something to write home about (and I mean properly geriatric and celibate 20th century popes, not some Renaissance Borgia party-popes), but we're talking about a Kennedy here. Anyone with a pulse and a vaguely humanoid appearance could have nailed John Kennedy.




Marilyn Monroe (1926-62)
(Speaking of nailing Kennedies.)

I've been told that this century's fascination with Marilyn Monroe is largely a gay thing. Am I the only one who thinks that letting gay guys pick the century's sexiest woman is probably a mistake?




William Kennedy Smith is tried for rape (1991)
(again: speaking of nailing Kennedies.)

It all seems like a vague nightmare now. We've forgotten how obsessed we were with it, but this is, without a doubt, the most overrated Trial of the Century.

"What?" you ask. "More overrated than the OJ Simpson trial with which we wasted most of 1995?"

Damn straight, and here's why: 1995 was a slow year. As saturated as the airwaves were with OJ, it's not like there was another big story being shoved aside to make room for it. With the Kennedy Smith trial, however, the nightly news would lead with yet another day of trial testimony, yet another interview with a noted Kennedy-watcher, yet another fret over whether to remove the blue dot from the victim's face, and then, after the commercial, inform us that, oh, by the way, the Soviet Union collapsed today.




John Glenn orbits the Earth (1961)
The press liked Glenn, and they made him the most famous of all American astronauts despite the fact that he was the third one NASA put to use. And let's not even get into the fact that the Russians were first anyway.




Amelia Earhart disappears (1937)
If Lindbergh's achievements were overrated, then what can we say about someone who came a decade later -- and failed?




Jackie Robinson (1947)
Quick: name the first black man licenced to practice law in America. How about the first black doctor? The first commissioned officer in the Army or Navy? The first black senator, ambassador or cabinet secretary? The first African American Bishop of the Episcopal or Catholic Churches? Winner of the Pulitzer Prize?

But you know the first African American to play major league baseball (in the 20th Century), do you? Don't you find that a wee bit trivial?




San Francisco Earthquake (1906)
Sure -- at 500 or so dead, it's the most people killed in America in one sitting since the Civil War, but here in the land of smoke detectors, airbags and bike helmets, it doesn't take much to achieve this honor. Americans have no idea what real risk looks like. Any self-respecting Third World hellhole easily loses this many people daily to bus plunges and soccer riots, and saves its earthquakes for horrendously huge body counts in the tens of thousands.




The Nobel Peace Prize
Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho won one for signing a peace accord that lasted all of, what? a week? And this was after they had both enthusiastically pursued a war that killed over a million.

Ralph Bunche won in 1950 for bringing peace to the Middle East. Anwar el-Sadat and Menachem Begin won in 1978 for bringing peace to the Middle East. Yassir Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres won in 1994 for bringing peace to the Middle East. With so many people bring peace to the Middle East, it should be the safest place on the planet, right?

It worries me when people like Arafat win the Peace Prizes. It seems like the only criteria for winning is finally promising to really, sincerely try not to, like, kill any more hapless bystanders. By that standard, I earned my Peace Prize years ago, so where's my prize money and free ticket to whichever snowy, blonde country hands those things out?

Might I humbly suggest a new rule:

RULE 12: If you've ever killed anyone, you're disqualified.



The Space Shuttle Challenger explodes (1986)
Shuttle launches were delayed a couple of years while NASA looked into the problem, but all in all, there were no long term effects. Space exploration continues at the same snail's pace as before, and in terms of passenger miles, it's still safer than driving.




Ayn Rand (1905-82)
Well, technically, I suppose I can only award her an honorable mention since I've never actually read any of her works, but life is too short to waste precious days reading books that are endlessly pushed on me by people who -- how shall I put this delicately? -- lack credibility.

The works of Ayn Rand easily rank as the philosophy most recommended by the least reliable people that I've ever encountered. They don't even attempt to make their philosophy sound appealing to new recruits. The core philosophy of all the Randites I've met seems to be "Some people are better than others -- for example, I'm better than you are -- and the better people deserve more," and "All social interaction is evil."

Hell, even Klansmen are willing to buy me a beer if I pass the color test.

[ZFBoxcar]

So basically, the much maligned French army took the fall, while the spunky, defiant Brits fled.

Except that the French Army fled with the British, at least over 100,000 of them did.

[Kid<2>Nite]

Border guards glare at one another; they patrol the barbed wire perimeter, and carefully check your papers before waving you through.

Big deal; they do that on the Canadian border.

Can anyone explain the importance of the Wall without using the word "symbolic"?

This individual wants to compare the Berlin wall to the Canadian border?

Some differences:

Canadian border unauthorized crossing = $$ fined
Berlin wall unauthorized crossing = shot dead

Canadian border keep you from entering
Berlin wall keep you from leaving

Canadian border guards = unarmed
Berlin wall guards = armed and dangerous

I was at the wall numerous times during my tour (early seventies) and when you walk by in uniform, KNOWING you are being "scoped"…………he's right, it goes far beyond symbolic.

We forgot the first rule of international diplomacy: Nations have as much credibility as their armies can enforce or their economies can produce, but terrorists only have as much credibility as you give them.

Nations have as much credibility as their armies can enforce and the willingness of the leaders to use them. Case in point: That fiasco ended the day Ronald Reagan took the oath of office and Carter went back to the peanut farm.

Ronald Reagan: one of the greatest military minds of the 20th century

Here's one guys list
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/overrate.htm

[sparten]

For what its worth I agree with you.

[TopHatter]

Alright, I'm going to plead dinosaur here. I'm guessing this guy is a "blogger" or something similar.
This guy is a good candidate for being the poster-child for why "bloggers" are the most overrated thing of the 21st Century (servicepeople reporting the TRUTH from Iraq and elsewhere provide the counterpoint to that little statement )

I don't have the patience to type more than one rebuttal to his lousy history:

Consider, for example, the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviets attempted to plant nuclear missiles in Cuba, but the US imposed a blockade and threatened to attack if the Soviets didn't stop their shenanigans. The world hovered on the brink of a nuclear showdown, but the Soviets backed down, so the world wasn't destroyed.

By my count that's six non-events in a row:

Where is he reading this obvious load of crap? Encyclopedia Britannica?

"Attempted to plant nuclear missiles" means that they didn't.

The Soviets DID plant nuclear missiles on Cuba. And lest he forgets, nuclear warheads are NOT confined to ballistic missiles. Maybe he ought to Google the name Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov.

"Imposed a blockade" means that the Soviet ships didn't go to Cuba.

In all of history, what blockade is absolutely leak-proof? Besides, the blockade was initiated AFTER Soviet freighters had been arriving at Cuba for months...you know, to deliver those nuclear missiles that WERE planted?

"Threatened to attack" means they didn't.

Wow! An actual true statement.

The Soviets didn't challenge the blockade...

The hell they didnt. Not with direct military force, but you don't always challenge someone with guns blazing.

... or finish installing nuclear weapons.

Sure about that one?

The world wasn't destroyed.

Brilliant conclusion Einstein. If it was destroyed, inane blogs like yours wouldnt be possible.

Thank you...NEXT!

[sparten]

TH its not a Blog, well not really. You should check it out. Its pretty good, don't have to agree with it, I certainly don't, but well its still good.

heres some of the more underrated aspects of the 20th century, from the same site.

Here are just a few aspects of the 20th Century which don't seem to get the attention they deserve:




Technology
Every book I've read which calls itself as a history of the 20th Century (as well as my own website) focuses on wars, elections, revolutions and legislation. They usually spend several pages discussing Hermann Goering, a mere Nazi toady, while completely ignoring Philo Farnsworth, the man who probably invented television.

Let's face it, two hundred years from now, no one will bother to differentiate between our World Wars any more than we differentiate between the various Wars of Somebody's Succession, but they will be teaching that the technology that emerged in this century changed the world more drastically than any election or war ever did.




Stalin
Most 20th Century wrap-ups have a quota: one inhuman monster and that's all, so they go with Hitler. Stalin didn't even make Time Magazine's 100, except as a footnote to Hitler.

Now, I'm not saying that I like the guy, nor am I going to get into that stale old argument over who was worse, Hitler or Stalin (Hitler was. Reason: Stalin was maxxed out, but Hitler was just getting started. Left unchecked, Hitler would have gotten even worse.), but the fact is that Stalin cast a much wider shadow over the Century than Hitler did. He started sooner, lasted longer, and throughout most of the era that the two dictators shared, Stalin controlled more people.

In fact, Stalin unifies the century far more effectively than any other single theme. Usually, Hitler is treated as the hub of the 20th Century. Not only is the rise of Nazism and the Second World War always discussed in enormous detail, but earlier events like the First World War and the Great Depression are treated as mere causes of Hitler's emergence. The problem is, the Century loses its unity once the war clouds settle. The post-war era just sort of sputters along aimlessly.

Using Stalin as the century's linchpin keeps the Second World War at the Century's core and keeps the First World War as a necessary precursor, but it also binds the Russian Revolution and the rise of Mao to the major flow of history, rather than treating them as isolated sideshows. It brings the Cold War into the main narrative as a natural outcome of earlier events, rather than as a sudden break in history.

(Yes, earlier I called the Cold War overrated, but overrated is not the same as unimportant.)

And one final depressing note, while Hitler makes a much better morality play (After inciting the mob and riding electoral success to become leader of a free (until then) democracy, he committed unparalleled atrocities and was taken down by the wrath of a unified world in a final apocalyptic fury.), Stalin is more typical of tyrants throughout history. He lurked in the shadows, manipulated his way to the head of a pre-existing autocracy, consolidated power brutally and died peacefully in bed, undefeated, unpunished.




The Moon Landing
Now that it's a done deed, we tend to trivialize it, but take a moment to clear your mind and ponder it without bias.

Within this past century -- within the lifetime of many of us here -- humans left their native planet and stood on the surface of an alien world for the first time.

Other firsts of the 20th Century (first woman on the US Cabinet, first gay Olympic champion, first inter-racial kiss on American television) would be utterly meaningless to aliens from Tau Ceti, but they would instantly recognize the significance of the moon landing. We should too.




Thurgood Marshall
This is man we should be honoring with a national holiday. As lead counsel for the good guys in the case of Brown vs. the Board of Education, Marshall may have had more individual responsibility for integration than any other person. As first AfrAm appointed to the United States Supreme Court, he wielded more real power than any other black man in history.

The problem with Marshall's legacy -- and the main reason he isn't canonized along with King -- is that Marshall wasn't conveniently killed off before he achieved real power. That means we have his opinions on a wide variety of issues, spanning several decades, and annoying many powerful interests, so it's harder to make nice with his memory, while trashing his cause, the way folks do with King.

(and while we're on the subject....)




Any U.S. Supreme Court Justice, especially Earl Warren.
Do I really need to point out how many major policy changes in the American social contract were enacted by judicial decision rather than legislation? Why then do we slice our American political histories into presidential administrations (Truman - Eisenhower - Kennedy) and not into chief justiceships (Stone - Vinson - Warren)? Why did the Time 100 ask historians to rank presidents, but not justices?

Whether we like this trend or not, we should at least admit that some Supreme Court justices have done more to shape the United States than most presidents have.




Chinese Revolution (1911-12)
Just for starters, it put a quarter of humanity on boil for half a century. Add to this the fact that it pretty much extinguished a major world religion by removing the focus of Chinese public life.

Why don't we hear more about it?




Tangshan Earthquake (1976)
The worst single day in human history.




Japan
Most English-language historians treat the Japanese as an insectlike collective without any recognizable individuals. It's time to start fleshing out their history. For example, most educated Americans recognize a few non-American businessmen like Krupp or Rothschild, but who are the industrialists behind Japan? We usually know the names of the Nazi inner circle, but who ordered the Nanking Massacre? Most educated Americans can recognize Churchill, Clemanceau, Lloyd George and DeGaulle, but can anyone name a single Japanese Prime Minister?

[THL]

TH its not a Blog, well not really. You should check it out. Its pretty good, don't have to agree with it, I certainly don't, but well its still good.

And here I just thought the whole thing was some attempt at humor. In fact that actually made it funnier.

[Karna]

Where's Tom Cruise?

[Parihaka]

Most over-rated event? Y2K. Most under-rated event? ABBA.

[Karna]

HAHAHA, damn. Y2K was the funniest thing ever.

Bringin' back those memreees..

[Bluesman]

Yeah, Y2K has to be the biggest calamity-that-never-was EVER.

Y'all 'member the build-up? How much money was spent to make certain everything wouldn't grind to a halt? How some people were huddling in their basements with canned food and weapons?

It was all such...nothing. It was really NOTHING. Not even any inconvenience, much less Armageddon, and global catastrophe.

Funny now, but at the time, I remember well NSA getting prepped to 'go off the grid', and standing by with all manner of contingency plans.

Fizzle. All hype. No problem.

Next time some 'expert' wants to tell you how bad things REALLY are (or will get), just remember that people have been predicting The End for @ a jillion years now, and we just keep strokin' along, waiting for the big asteroid that really WILL do us all in.

[Dreadnought]

A diffacult question to answer when there are so many to list.

Within this past century -- within the lifetime of many of us here -- humans left their native planet and stood on the surface of an alien world for the first time.

Definately a pinnacle moment in all of mankinds history.

[Dreadnought]

Here an idea pick a country and we shall go from there

[Bill]

Most Overrated Events/People of the 20th Century
Here's one guys list
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/overrate.htm

The Clintons.

[Trooth]

Yeah, Y2K has to be the biggest calamity-that-never-was EVER.

Y'all 'member the build-up? How much money was spent to make certain everything wouldn't grind to a halt? How some people were huddling in their basements with canned food and weapons?

It is because the money was spent that the things did not grind to a halt!

You think the world's banks (for example) all trundled along in 2000 with no Y2K problems? No they had teams sorting out those things that did slip through despite all the money spent before hand. The fact we don't know about it publicly means they did a good job, but it all costs money.

Next time some 'expert' wants to tell you how bad things REALLY are (or will get), just remember that people have been predicting The End for @ a jillion years now, and we just keep strokin' along, waiting for the big asteroid that really WILL do us all in.

As long as someone else listens we might stand a chance though.