America’s Worst Public Figures of the Past 100 Years

“The Democrat-controlled liberal mainstream media is LYING, claiming that the Republican Party is divided at our own Republican National Convention.”

So asserted a July 21 e-mail from the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Later that day, Reno City Hall announced “The Reno Fire Department will reopen Reno Fire Station 19 in Somersett on Friday, July 22.”

They failed to note that Station 19 will provide paramedics but no firefighting.

Just two examples of the Marx Brothers school of public relations: “What are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

LABOR OF LOVE. The Barbwire found a permanent home beginning in the 12 August 1988 Daily Sparks Tribune. Actually, my first byline appeared in the sleepy weekly Trib of 1973. I still don’t measure up to late-great newspaper owner Carl Shelly who kept writing well into his 90s.

DIRTY DEEDS DEPT. Since I’m old and grouchy, herewith the Barbwire rogues gallery of America’s worst. Feel free to add, subtract or disagree.

1. SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR. The first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court gutted Roe. v. Wade, then installed President Bush the Lesser. Hundreds of thousands lie dead and dying in south Asia.
2. PRESIDENT RICHARD THE ROTTEN and his stooge Henry Kissinger prolonged the Vietnam War for seven years. To persecute war protestors and black people, Nixon created the War on Drugs which still metastasizes today.
3. WOODROW WILSON. Elected to keep us out of World War One, he couldn’t wait to get in. Imprisoned dissenters and uppity women wanting the right to vote.
4. THE SIEG HEIL BUSHES. The Bush family not only represented Nazi corporate interests in the U.S. during WW2, but also got us into a passel of still-ongoing wars. President Bush the Elder gave Saddam Hussein permission to invade Kuwait, then phonied up a war to oust him. Dubya and his veep did the same a decade later after ignoring warnings about the 9/11 attacks.
5. HARRY TRUMAN dropped the bomb, too dumb to recognize that generals always phony up excuses to play with new toys.
6. J. EDGAR HOOVER permanently damaged law enforcement.
7. O.J. SIMPSON unwound much of the progress of the civil rights movement.
8. CLINTON AND GORE. Bill screwed the poor, expanded prisons and exported jobs. Al had a failure of heart. Had he insisted on recounting all of Florida, he would have been president rather than Dubya.
9. ALAN GREENSPAN AND MILTON FRIEDMAN, the most dismal failures in the dismal science of economics.
10. LEE HARVEY OSWALD. You know.

DISHONORABLE MENTION. Justices Antonino Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Greedy banker Andrew Mellon and his corporate acolytes Harding, Hoover and Reagan. Sen. Robert Taft, R-Ohio, and President Reagan for cutting union labor by two-thirds. The Dulles Brothers for neverending American imperialism. Hitler shill Avery Brundage for 70 years of Olympic travesties. Britney Spears for convincing millions of non-anorexic non-teens to wear halter tops.

CONSPICUOUS ABSENCE: Current presidential candidates. The cheapest of cheap shots are too cheap even for me.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.

Andrew Barbano is a 47-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.