"What character in History has the worst press?" Topic

Play this anyway you want. They could deserve the bad press, they could be shamefully maligned, or maybe [[FILL IN THE BLANKS]].

I nominate, with no editorial content (maybe later, and/but you are not bound by this), and in no particular order:

Caligula
Hitler
Stalin
Vlad Tepes
Elizabeth Bathory
George McClellan
Richard Nixon
Hun, Attila the
Napoleon
Nero
Benedict Arnold
Richard III

Pray continue, and remember, this is a SERIOUS POLL THAT HAS A POINT!!!

Pray continue, and remember, this is a SERIOUS POLL THAT HAS A POINT!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!

Well, Vlad certainly had a point, quite a few of them in fact.

I would add the following to the list:

Genghis Khan
Tomás de Torquemada
Ivan the Terrible
Maximilien Robespierre
Neville Chamberlain
Benito Mussolini
Mao Zedong
Pol Pot
Idi Amin
Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier

Connard Sage

Henry VIII
Lucretia Borgia
Napoleon III
Custer
Horatio Gates

John the OFM

I hope you've put me in the 'shamefully maligned' category 20th…

The worst press would be for the ones you've never even heard off, working under the theory that "any press is good press".

Richard III

Napoleon III
Alexander Haig
Neville Chamberlain
King Leopold of Belgium
Gen. Roberts
Arthur St. Clair
Cortez
Christopher Columbus
Henry Ford
Cornelius Vanderbuilt
Bill Gates
J.J. Hill

Catherine the Great

The Macbeths
Santa Anna
Tarleton
Geronimo
Marie Antoinette
Louis XIII, XIV & XVI
Mazarin
Pontius Pilate
Cardinal Richelieu
Jack the Ripper
Mussolini
Kaiser Wihelm II
Franco
Al Capone

Xerxes – especially the shaved head and punk jewelry through his cheeks. And who's to say the Hellespont didn't require a lashing?

Oh, and of course – Yoko Ono – oh no.

Sitting Bull
Pizzaro
Tommy Lasorda
Bizarro Superman

Patton

Cromwell
William Topaz McGonagall
Captain Robert Campbell

Ishtar
Heaven's Gate

Both highly underated.
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God, that was hard to type with a straight face..

Connard Sage 20 Jan 2011 8:15 a.m. PST
I hope you've put me in the 'shamefully maligned' category 20th…

That's the problem – this really needs to be 2 polls for the "deserves all they got" and the "don't deserve all they got" suggestions,.

William Shatner

Niccolò Machiavelli
Nathan Bedford Forrest
Arthur "Bomber" Harris
Earl Kitchener

Sulla
Saddam
Cleopatra
Cain
Lucifer
Brutus
Mengele

If you are known by a single name long after you've died, it's probably not a good thing.

Oswald Moseley ?

My father was a founder member of the UK Socialist Workers Party. One of the jobs he had in that role was as editor of a book called The Big Red Joke Book. Marxist humour. The first joke book I ever read, which might explain a lot if you know me.

Anyway:

The ghosts of Napoleon, Caeser and Alexander are watching a military parade through Red Square.

Caeser: 'If I had had chariots like those tanks I would have conquered the world!'

Alexander: 'If I had had arrows like those ICBMs, I would have conquered the world.

Napoleon is reading a copy of Pravda: ' If I had had a newspaper like this, no one would have BLEEPing heard of Waterloo!'

Sounds like the makings of a two part poll with a top ten and then narrow it to one.

George Bush II

Sarah Palin

Shaka Zulu

Lord Chelmsford.

Pol Pot

Peter Hofschröer
Big Mean Elf

Herod
Salome

Wallis Simpson
De Sade
Michael Vick

Cain

Hitler – bad press, but probably justified.

Edward VII – the little nazi

I don't think you could call Edward VII little or a Nazi. Edward VIII on the other hand …

John the OFM?

Gordon Bennett
link

Phil Barker I would think, unjustly mind you.

SJDonovan – typo ! Thanks for pointing out though.

Prince (later King) John. Big brother Dick abandons his royal duties to go gallivanting around Europe and Palestine, fails to recapture Jerusalem, gets kidnapped on the way home, and little Johnny gets stuck with raising the ransom to get Dick out of hock. Dickie is finally released, comes home a hero, while Johnny is slagged for actually running the place while big bro is away.

Of course, losing the crown jewels in the laundry was pretty careless.

Darth Vader
Satan
Voldemort
Saruman
Dick Nixon

If by bad press you literally mean who has been most vilified in print and other media in the English speaking world I'd say Hitler wins hands down, no one else even comes close.

After that it's really a matter of how well known the person is. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot certainly have had some bad press but for some reason people who kill and torture millions of people in the name of a crazy economic/social idea are not considered as evil as people who kill and torture millions of people in the name of a crazy pseudo-scientific/social idea. Go figure.

People who kill lots of people just because they think they ought to be in charge almost seem to get a pass, perhaps because there have been so many of them.

Mel Gibson
Mike Tyson
OJ
Monty
Christian Bale

Blackbeard
Captain Kidd
The Clantons
The Youngers
Billy the Kid
Lord Goring
Herman Goering
Rasputin
Typhoid Mary

Vortigern
Kaiser Wilhelm
Czar Nicholas

Stanley Baldwin

Mordred
Who was the ACW general who wrote a memo to himself denying his own request?

Rob

My God Captain Bragg, you have quarrelled with every oficer in the army. And now, suh, you are quarrelling with yourself!

Captain Kidd (Pirate… actually, not really a pirate, but history brands him as such. Hence the worst press. He needed a good publicist).

E.H.