Comment: This list is a joke. Here there are plenty of deserving female athletes to include, and they are left off entirely; this is the category where whatever idiot who complied the list decided women don’t count? Babe Didrikson Zaharias? Wilma Rudolph? Babe Ruth belongs on the list, but a paragon of discipline and sportsmanship he wasn’t. Nobody who knows anything about baseball would pick Cy Young over better, more famously ethical pitchers like Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson. Jackie Robinson, sure, but no Willy Mays? Ted Williams was an all-time baseball great and a war hero. Ali was a draft dodger; Joe Louis helped discredit Hitler’s “master race” poison by knocking out Max Schmeling. While we’re on that topic: Jesse Owens? Hello?

Scientists, Inventors, and Explorers (“Pioneers of the mind and frontier who pushed the boundaries of human knowledge and American territory.”)

1. Scientists: Luis Walter Alvarez, Norman Borlaug, George Washington Carver,
Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Maria Mitchell, Jonas Salk, Nikola Tesla

Comment: More DEI crap: George Washington Carver but not Luther Burbank?

2. Inventors: Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel Colt, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford,
Grace Hopper, Samuel Morse, Orville and Wilbur Wright.

Comment: There are other inventors in her own field that deserve honor as much as Grace Hopper, except that she has lady parts. Some gun-nut most have added Colt, and never heard of Philo Farnsworth, who first patented a television.

3. Explorers & Aviators: Neil Armstrong, William Clark, Christopher Columbus,
Amelia Earhart, John Glenn, Meriwether Lewis, Christa McAuliffe, Sally Ride,
Alan Shepard.

Comment: Ugh. Christa McAuliffe was no more of a hero than the three male astronauts who burned to death or her crewmates on the Challenger, nor does dying in an accident make one an automatic hero. Why should Sally Ride be honored more than any male astronaut? Glenn but not Alan Shepherd? Armstrong but not Buzz Aldrin? Why not the whole crew of Apollo 13? No Charles Lindburgh, the most famous aviator of them all? WHAT MORON COMPILED THIS LIST??

4. The “Human Computers” of NASA: Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan.

Comment: Pure DEI

5. Entrepreneurs and Industrialists (“Visionaries who utilized the system of free enterprise to build prosperity and create jobs.”): Andrew Carnegie, Walt Disney, Herbert Henry Dow, Steve Jobs, George P. Mitchell, Sam Walton.

Comment: Why Carnegie and not Rockefeller? Sears and Roebuck were ahead of Sam Walton and less destructive. Where are the Hollywood entrepreneurs who built the movie industry?

OK, this exercise is making me sick to my stomach and I have another third to go. I’m taking a break; in fact, I’ll leave the rest of the list to you to dissect except with for a random comment after my head explodes. It is as bad as what went before:

Artists and Architects: “Creators who captured the beauty of the American landscape and the dignity of its people.”

1.Visual Arts: Ansel Adams, John James Audubon, Charles Willson Peale, Norman Rockwell, John Singer Sargent, Gilbert Stuart.

2. Architects: Cass Gilbert, Pierre Charles L’Enfant, John Russell Pope, Henry
Hobson Richardson, Thomas Ustick Walter, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Musicians and Performers ( “The voices and talents that defined the American sound and culture.”)

1. Musicians: Louis Armstrong, Irving Berlin, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Nat King
Cole, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin, Woody Guthrie, Billie
Holiday, Whitney Houston, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Bessie Smith

Comment: KABOOM! Bing Crosby was more important, accomplished, more successful and more versatile than anyone on that list with the possible exceptions of Elvis and Sinatra. Irvin Berlin belongs, but no more than Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim.

2. Actors: Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Charlton Heston,
Bob Hope, Jimmy Stewart, Shirley Temple, John Wayne.

Comment: AAARGGHH! KABOOM! Charlie Chaplin! Judy Garland! Marlon Brando! Even Lauren Bacall would say that Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn were more accomplished and important in her field. Bob Hope was less an actor than Bing Crosby! There is no way to justify including James Stewart and not his friend, Henry Fonda, who constructed a legacy of representing the moral and ethical common American man. But the ultimate negligence is leaving off Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, both icons.

Finally, one word: “Directors.” Ford, Hawks, Welles, Stevens, Capra, and others. Yes, Rob Reiner. How can these crucial artists be omitted? Answer: when those compiling the list don’t know what the hell they are doing, that’s when.

Scholars, Authors, and Journalists: “Thinkers who defended American ideals through the written and spoken word.”

1. Authors: Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), James Fenimore Cooper, Emily
Dickinson, Robert Frost, Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Ernest Hemingway,
Julia Ward Howe, Harper Lee, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville,
Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Comments: KABOOM! Psst! Morons! What about playwrights? Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, August Wilson, Neil Simon?

2. Scholars & Philosophers: Hannah Arendt, William F. Buckley, Jr., Peter
Drucker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Milton Friedman, Russell Kirk, Henry David
Thoreau

3. Journalists: Edward Murrow, Alex Trebek.

Comment: KABOOM!!! ALEX TREBECK???

Faith Leaders and Humanitarians Servants of God and humanity who provided moral leadership to communities and aid
to the suffering.

1. Religious Figures: Katharine Drexel, Jonathan Edwards, George Fox, Billy
Graham, John Neumann, Junípero Serra, Elizabeth Ann Seton, Fulton Sheen,
Augustus Tolton.

2. Humanitarians: Clara Barton, Julia Child, Dorothy Day, Helen Keller, William
Mayo, Walter Reed, Anne Sullivan

Summation: The list is indefensible and indeed incompetent . Signature significance: No mention of Clarence Darrow!

In Part 3, I’ll recount the fate of a previous effort to achieve the same objective as a “National Garden of American Heroes.