The Counterfeiters

If you watch CNN, then you are familiar with their recent efforts to honor the unsung heroes of the world with their annual television special honoring individuals from around the globe who, without the nominations of their friends and family, may have gone unnoticed. While I sincerely believe it's one of the more integral and compassionate broadcasts currently running on television, I also believe it important to point out the false heroes that have supposedly shaped or done something otherworldly, but who, in spite of their supposed contributions, have done us all a great disservice. Perhaps by pointing these individuals out, we can stop perpetuating the myths surrounding their existence, and start reevaluating who we idolize and whether they really deserve the pedestals they've been immortalized with.

It is with this purpose that I present to you the top five people I consider to be the phoniest of the phony heroes:

(1) FDR No one is denying the New Deal and the groundbreaking work Franklin Delano Roosevelt did while serving consecutive terms in the White House, but what should also be mentioned is his miraculous ability to look the other way. Not only did he allow the formulation and operation of Japanese internment camps in the United States, but he also deliberately refused the St. Louis, a boat carrying 1,000 Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. They were forced to go back to Antwerp and many of the boat's passengers perished in various concentration camps. Saying he had a slanted moral compass is a euphemism.

(2) Christopher Columbus Speaking of compass, he's a colonizer, not the man who discovered the New World. It was already there--and as a matter of fact, when he set foot on it, he was the epicenter and reason behind over 100,000 deaths in the Arawak culture. He's a murderer. Not a hero. The only thing worse than Christopher Columbus is the fact that we have a national holiday celebrating his 'accomplishments.'

(3) Thomas Edison He may be the father of electricity, but he is also an abuser of that invention. In 1903, when a circus elephant named Topsy killed her trainer (the third individual she had killed) in reaction to the trainer's feeding her a lit cigarette, the elephant's owners planned to execute her in front of the general public. And by execute--I mean electrocute. They contacted Thomas Edison to do the task. He gladly accepted and not only did he turn it into an inhumane spectacle by running 6600 volts of electricity through her, but he brought his motion picture camera to film the event. He then showed the film to audiences around the country. Edison may have been one of the greatest inventors of the 19th century, but he's still just a voyeur who's guilty of animal cruelty. What an asshole.

(4) D.W. Griffith He is one of the earliest filmmakers in the history of filmmaking. He will probably be credited for the close-up, but truth be told, that credit should go to his cameraman, Billy Bitzer. That whole situation is obnoxious in and of itself and that's not even the real problem with him. The real problem is the fact that he made The Birth of a Nation, a controversial epic film that sympathized with hate crime groups and the mistreatment of African Americans and furthermore, depicted the Ku Klux Klan as champions of what was 'right.' It's a ridiculous film that did nothing but augment the lynching problem in this country in the early part of the 20th century and further prove how far we were from the days of the Civil Rights Movement. People will fight me on this and say that he followed it up with the remorseful and contemporary Intolerance, a film that portrayed the dangers of bigotry, but celluloid is not in pencil. It's immortal. What was done was already done. And for me, this didn't make up for the other movie. In fact, it just made him a flounderer.

(5) Charles Lindbergh Sure, he was a revolutionary aviator known for his non-stop solo flight in his single-seat, single-engine monoplane that took him out over open water--from New York to Paris. But that didn't make him open minded to the rest of the world. This quote speaks for itself: "We can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races." Aren't you thrilled that Time Magazine named him Man of the Year in 1927? Let's not forget the fact that after leaving this country, he had an affair with a woman, and then the woman's sister, and then his secretary. Oh, and he has children by all of them and his wife. Yuck.

Just because someone is good at their craft and they have made a noteworthy contribution to this world in doing said craft, does not make them a hero. In fact, and especially if they are famous for it, they should see said craft as an opportunity to do something that would actually qualify them as a hero, not question their designation. Do the mistakes in the private lives of these individuals disqualify any of their exemplary actions? Probably not. But if I know about said 'mistakes', comments, lack of action, or crimes against humanity--then they weren't so private, were they?

Why is it that we always sing the praises of everyone but the rightfully labeled unsung?