I use www.refdesk.com as my browser home page. I like the at-a-glance access to lots of trivia, from today's SAT question to today's astronomy tidbit. Today, the "site of the day" was Life Magazine's list of the 'Top 100 People of the Millenium'. OK. I was pretty surprised to see how few women made the cut and how many obvious choices were overlooked. I mean, was P.T. Barnum really a more important person than Hildegarde von Bingen? Not only is she not on the list, but good old Phinneas T ranked ahead of Susan B. Anthony--because successful promotion was more of a boon to the species than the suffrage movements?
Of course, the ranking is wholly subjective and, to be fair, the bizarre relative rankings aren't the sole province of the ten women who managed to appear on the list. I mean Hitler comes in as number 13, and while he was hideous and did devastating things, I just can't rank him that highly amid the folks in the list. To do so means to rank fear much higher on the list than I'm willing to concede.
Lists like this are always controversial, but they do provoke contemplation and conversation. In that light, I suppose Life's list is quite successful.
Copyright 2003 Seasmoke All rights reserved
posted by Morgan @ 14:19
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