January 2011

Most Overrated Feminist:

Gloria Steinem. The media dropped the real feminist foremother, the ferociously haggard Betty Friedan, like a hot potato when the flirty blonde-tressed Steinern waltzed in after a glitzy career as a socialite journalist sporting see-through plastic dresses. Steinem deserves credit for stabilizing the popular image of feminists, who were getting tarred as bra-burning lesbo witches. However, her knee-jerk male bashing damaged feminism, and her coterie-style urban liberal politics sank it into a self-congratulatory swamp. Steinem’s glib anti-intellectualism ruined Ms. magazine, which should have been a forum for diverse feminist voices but instead silenced and ostracized all opposition (such as my own 1960s pro-sex wing, which returned with a vengeance in the 1990s). Steinem is a party animal and first-class schmoozer. She’s chief deb of her own little sorority, which awards honorary memberships to pampered men of power, such as glad-handing presidential adulterers.

Most Overrated Fashion Designer:

Naming a. single fashion designer the most overrated is like picking the most self-absorbed model: There are so many to choose from! To my mind the entire professional class is overrated—by the humorless, adoring in-group that fawns over every ruffle and seam, by a suggestible public that pays premium prices to wear “designer” labels, and, most of all, by the designers themselves. The whole process is skewed by the vast sums fashion designers spend burnishing their own good names and reputations. Seductive images of their taste, competence, good breeding, and tolerance for all races (if not body types) are ubiquitous. Some designers, certainly, were avatars of something original and important and created fashions that both reflected and altered their society. It is in this realm, then, where we should look for the most overrated, for to be genuinely overrated, the designer must have a fairly grand reputation.

Most Overrated Civil War General:

William Tecumseh Sherman. The Pooh-Bahs of generalship persist in ranking him behind only Grant (or ahead of him) in the pantheon of Union commanders. Yet in fact, when it came to the battlefield, Sherman was not that much of a commander. Measure a general by fighting ability, and he slips well down the list. Early in the war, in Kentucky and Missouri, he outdistanced even McClellan in describing the vast enemy hosts assembling against him. At Shiloh he failed to take precautions against surprise attack and was therefore shamefully surprised. When set against a determined opponent, as at Chickasaw Bluffs above Vicksburg in December 1862, or at Missionary Ridge at Chattanooga in November 1863, he went nowhere. On his famous march against Atlanta, facing a greatly outmanned opponent, he admitted to Grant, “My operation has been rather cautious than bold.”

Most Overrated Decade:

Most Overrated City:

Which city’s most intrinsic interest has been most exaggerated? The obvious choice is Washington, D.C.—whose reputation is inflated by its denizens, of course, but even more by its detractors. In fact you might say that belittlement of Washington for being too powerful is American history’s most overrated opinion. So let’s say Orlando.

Most Underrated City:

Muscle Shoals, Alabama. If you wonder why, that proves my point. But the main reason I say that is because I enjoy making gnomic pronouncements. Another place, a former national publishing and cultural center that is perhaps too readily, if understandably, disregarded as boring, is Hartford, Connecticut, cradle of America’s insurance and arms industries and home at various times to Mark Twain (if I had to recommend a visit to one historic house in this country, it would be his), Noah Webster, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Wallace Stevens, and one of the nation’s oldest newspapers.

Most Overrated Classic Children’s Book:

Most Overrated Ballplayer:

Most Overrated Ballpark:

Most Overrated Autobiography or Journal:

Most Overrated Ad Campaign:

“Where’s the beef?” and/or “Avis, we try harder.” As fun as the former was, and grist for the mimics, does anyone recall just which fast-food chain it was promoting? As for the latter, a delightful campaign, but at its end Avis was still number two to Hertz, with its more prosaic O.J.-runs-through-the-airports commercials.

Most Underrated Ad Campaign:

“The sun never sets on the Willys Jeep.” In a few words, plus some great pictures, not only was a commercial plug conveyed, but the whole spirit of a country at war, and winning it, was instantly communicated.