In honor of the week after Thanksgiving and the inevitable march toward the New Year, plus a combination of tryptophan, child-rearing and book-writing-related fatigue that has sapped most of my creativity, here are seven great Americans you’ve probably never heard of … and one you’ve definitely never heard of.
Jeannette Rankin: The United States’ first female member of Congress was first elected to her post (in Montana) in 1916. She was a Republican who fought against poverty, entered the field of social work, attended something called the New York School of Philanthropy and voted against World War I and World War II. She was the only member of Congress to vote against the latter war, which ought to tell you something about the Republican Party in the 1940s. In other words, they were Democrats. If it weren’t for women like Rankin, we wouldn’t have women like Nancy Pelosi. OK, let’s rephrase that one: Jeannette Rankin was a great American.
Ted Sirios: As soon as I learned about this man, he immediately became my hero. It turns out that Ted, an alcoholic and psychotic bellhop (as if that isn’t awesome enough), would picture images in his mind while shitfaced and bang his head against a rigged-up “gizmo” connected to a Polaroid camera. And it worked! The photos would come out and look like the images he thought of. Some people figured he was a crackpot, but a psychiatrist in Denver, Jule Eisenbud, bought into it, and issued a quote about Ted that very well could have been written about me: “He does not abide by the laws and customs of our society. He ignores social amenities and has been arrested many times. … He does not exhibit self-control and will blubber, wail and bang his head on the floor when things are not going his way.”
Ad Reinhardt: When I was ten years old, my dad dragged me to the Guggenheim Art Museum to see “Ad Reinhardt in Color,” an exhibit of one of America’s pioneers of modern art. Most of the canvases were covered in one color. You’d look up at the wall and see a huge framed rectangle with just red inside. Or black. Or yes, even white. My dad and a lot of the other grown-up museum-goers were pissed. I thought it was hilarious. It takes a ball-buster to know one, and when you’re fucking with that many people in that famous of a museum, you’re doing something incredibly well.
Marion Donovan: If I believed in God, I’d have him or her bless the soul of this woman, who invented the disposable diaper. But since I’m a Scientologist, I will have the Lord of Scientology, Tom Cruise, bless her instead. This one’s pretty self-explanatory, although those “green” parents who are fighting the losing battle of cloth diapers and “cleaning” services will argue that point with me while sipping on their bottled water. The only thing green, folks, are the permanent stains on the eco-friendly turd receptacles.
Esther Ross: Ross devoted fifty years of her life to earning federal recognition of the Stillaguamish Tribe in the Puget Sound area. It was a noble cause for the Native American, indeed, and an even more noble cause for the white-trash Western Washington gambler, who need only drive up Interstate 5 to Arlington, Wash., to get his taste of Stillaguamish culture — not to mention $2.25 well drinks — and a good deal of wham for his wampum at the tribe’s Angels of the Winds casino.
Everett Ruess: Long before Chris McCandless gave Jon Krakauer, Sean Penn and Eddie Vedder hard-ons by donating all his money, hitchhiking to Alaska and dying in an abandoned bus from extreme exposure to stupidity, Everett Ruess was being there, doing that, but with more aplomb and purpose (art, poetry, exploration) and without a movie deal that would require the actor portraying him to wear a pathetic fake beard.
Julie Krone: Horse racing fans know who she is, but since nobody under the age of eighty is a horse racing fan, she qualifies here. Krone, now retired, was the best female jockey ever and the only one to win a Triple Crown race, taking the 1993 Belmont Stakes aboard Colonial Affair. What makes her a great American even more than that, however, is that I bet on her in that race and made over $2500 — at the time the biggest gambling score of my young degenerate career.
Tom Dinard: Yes, even you, all seven of my loyal FlipCollective readers, probably haven’t heard of me. But rest assured that when I’m not frazzled or sleep-deprived or barren of ideas or driven by the horrors of procrastination to seriously consider writing two-thousand-word screeds on Christ imagery in cartoon sequels, I am creating legend, word by word, sentence by sentence. American-ness has already been achieved, and greatness ensues. Read on.
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VERY funny! Thanks for the info and the early morning laugh
I very much enjoyed this post.
As we say back home, “Belle parole non pascon i gatti”.
Great idea for a piece, I could have gone my whole life an never wiki’d them.
I think you should put in a footnote that those reusable diaper parents actually really do drink bottled water because otherwise the idea seems too far fetched.
Great piece! You are a great American!