Most Overrated First Lady:
Lucy Hayes. Hailed by eager reporters in 1877 as a symbol of the “new woman” for being the first college graduate, she refused to publicly support higher education for women. Her White House ban on alcohol was praised by temperance leaders as brave public leadership when it was simply the decision of a woman who had never served liquor in her home.
Most Overrated First Lady:
Fashion trends do not submit to rating—they are for passion, loathing, or indifference—but I will lend myself to the idea for a minute. Most Overrated Fashion Trend: The alleged abolition of corsets during the second decade of this century. The Most Underrated: The permanent shortening of skirts during the same period. Corseting, which gives a desirable line to the dressed body, has been a feature of human dress for millennia, undertaken by both sexes at different times, and it has never been abolished, only differently applied. In this century, for example, the corset gave way to the bra and girdle, simply moving the constriction away from the center. The vast social and moral significance attached to the temporary shift from small to large female waists around 1913 has always been laughable.
Most Overrated Economist: By far the most overrated economist in the American tradition was not of this country but of France. It was Jean Baptiste Say, who dominated macroeconomic thought (as it is now called) until the 1930s. Before then, it has been said, one could not get an advanced degree at Harvard if one did not believe in Say’s Law. The law held that the production of goods and the rendering of services systemically provided all the revenues by which they would be purchased. Thus there could not be a shortage of purchasing power—aggregate demand —with adverse and depressive effects. In 1936, with the work of John Maynard Keynes, there came a general realization that while Say’s Law undoubtedly paid out in wages, profits, rents, or whatever the wherewithal to buy the products, it might not be spent. The result could be a rather disagreeable recession or depression, however denoted. The circumstances of the time and John Maynard Keynes destroyed Say’s Law. Most Underrated Economist:
Most Overrated Comic Strip: The American comic strip once swam proudly through the central currents of twentieth-century popular culture, but it has by now been reduced to little more than a guppy floating in a media food chain with Hollywood sharks at the top. At the dusk of the twentieth century, very few even know or care about the medium enough to overrate it. In fact most of the desultory comic strips fighting for air in the cramped ghetto of today’s comics pages are barely worth rating at all.
in American history is Benedict Arnold, who destroyed his own fame and previous brilliant career, accomplished nothing but his own exile, and affected events much more as a hero (before) than as a traitor (after). is Ted Bundy, who is almost single-handedly responsible for several tons of miserable fourthrate fiction in both novels and film. He has a lot to answer for, that geek.
Most Overrated Civil Rights Initiative:
With great sadness I’d have to say that the most overrated civil rights initiative is the Supreme Court’s decision in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case. The Brown decision did end legally segregated school systems in the South, and—probably its greatest positive impact—it raised the nation’s consciousness about the wrongness of the Jim Crow system and put the (then highly respected) federal government in a position of firm opposition to it. On the other hand, the issue that Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund raised in the case, inferior public education for African-American children, is still very much with us. It seems unfair to treat the Brown decision as a great historic triumph when the public school system is still so separate and so unequal for blacks and whites, even if more because of patterns of residence, taxation, and culture than by legal decree.
Most Overrated Automobile: The 1955 Ford Thunderbird. The one question I am asked most frequently by the nonautomotive public is, “Why doesn’t Ford bring back the 1955 T-Bird?” This two-seat roadster struck an emotional chord with the public that few vehicles have managed. But the car was heavy, handled poorly, and had a level of fit and finish easily matched by most home-built picnic tables. Yet it looked good, exceptionally good, and it still does. Just don’t drive one. Most Underrated Automobile: The 1917-28 Ford Model T. The T is widely acknowledged to be the vehicle that brought car ownership within the grasp of the working man and woman. By 1917 Henry Ford’s adroit use of the moving assembly line had made possible the purchase of a two-passenger runabout for $345, substantially less than its first-year (1909) price of $850.
Most Overrated Architect: Philip Johnson has said on many occasions that his ambition was always to be l’architecte du roi (architect to the king). Much of the American press has obliged his fantasy, dubbing him the dean of American architecture, a title last held by the prolific Richard Morris Hunt, who died in 1895. Phooey. Johnson’s best building was his first, the renowned Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, finished in 1949. But even Johnson has acknowledged that it was a knockoff of the Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe, who was Johnson’s mentor. With a few notable exceptions (the 1965 Kline Science Center at Yale and the 1973 IDS Center in Minneapolis among them), Johnson’s output has ranged from the cryptofascistically mediocre (the 1964 New York State Theater at Lincoln Center) to the campy absurd (the 1986 “Lipstick” Building on New York’s Third Avenue).
Most Overrated Ad Campaign: Delia Femina MacNamee & Partners’ mid-eighties campaign featuring “Joe Isuzu,” the compulsive liar. It won the hearts of the public and ad people with its beautifully executed vignettes featuring an outrageous character, a man you loved to hate, doing a con job on the product. Amusing, entertaining, and useless. It did nothing for Isuzu’s sales or the Isuzu brand image and—understandably—enraged the dealers, already hypersensitive to the entrenched image of car salesmen as oily cheats. Public gratitude for being entertained wasn’t motivation enough to visit the showroom and check out the product, which was kept largely invisible while Toyota, Honda et al. slugged away, selling the metal. Isuzu thereby lost a lot of potential sales by default. This campaign was an egregious example of a common advertising failing: succumbing to a powerful creative idea even if it’s wrong. Most Underrated Ad Campaign: