Your Heroes? Random Top 5.

judasdisney · Post by **judasdisney** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 6:13 am

Just off the top-of-your-head, some random Top 5 (or if you want to go more than 5, OK) personal heroes.

I expect this could lead us into divisive discussions, Dylan-style "watch your parking meter" anti-hero impulses, defensiveness or compulsions to justify, etc. But let's dive in.

Since I guess I have to start the thread and set the tone, I'll go random Top 5 ... and then honorable mention.

Top 5:

MLK, George Orwell, Mark Twain, Raoul Wallenberg, Sibel Edmonds.

Honorable mention:

Mohammed Mossadeqh, George Seldes, Sinclair Lewis, Ken Saro-wiwa, Woody Guthrie, John Trudell, Scott Ritter.

OK, so I went twelve. And I didn't even mention Tesla or Wesley Autrey or David Cronenberg or George A. Romero or Jacques Vallee.

And now for your own personal Sgt. Pepper album cover:

brainpanhandler · Post by **brainpanhandler** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 7:05 am

Top 5:

Wilhelm Reich
Viktor Frankl
Gore Vidal
Kurt Vonnegut
Hugo Chavez

Top 5 Villains that should burn in hell:

Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney
Charles Murray
Woodrow Wilson
Karl Rove
Barney

8bitagent · Post by **8bitagent** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 7:24 am

sunny · Post by **sunny** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 12:13 pm

Martin Luther King.

Malcolm X

Eugene Debs

RFK

Mark Twain

Hugo Chavez

JFK

Honorable mention:

Hannah Arendt
John Garfield
Sinclair Lewis

Post by **Jeff** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 12:30 pm

Not repeating some of my heroes already mentioned (notably Orwell, Wallenberg and Chavez):

Simone Weil

Norman Bethune

Tommy Douglas

Andrei Tarkovsky

Sinead O'Connor

barracuda · Post by **barracuda** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 2:32 pm

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Last words: "Tell them I've had a wonderful life."

http://www.iep.utm.edu/w/wittgens.htm

Evariste Galois
Last words: "Don't cry, I need all my courage to die at twenty."

http://scidiv.bcc.ctc.edu/Math/Galois.html

Voltaire
Last words: "For God's sake, let me die in peace."

http://atheisme.free.fr/Quotes/Voltaire.htm

Alfred Jarry
Last words: "Get me a toothpick."

http://www.answers.com/topic/ubu-roi-play-7

Wilson Mizner
Last words (upon reviving briefly from a coma to find a priest giving him benediction): "Why should I talk to you? I've just been talking to your boss."

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/wilson_mizner.html

Charles Baudelaire

http://fleursdumal.org/

Mina Loy, Ray Eames, Sonia Delanay, Gertrude Stein, Emmy Hennings, Billy Holiday

DrVolin · Post by **DrVolin** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 2:38 pm

Fabius

Cato

Darwin

Orwell

Harris

annie aronburg · Post by **annie aronburg** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 2:42 pm

Millard Sheets
Renee Caisse
Temple Grandin
Genesis P-Orridge
Nickola Tesla

My Grandma is above them all.

Annie A.

compared2what? · Post by **compared2what?** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 2:56 pm

Also not repeating those already listed, I nominate at random:

Oriana Fallacci
Marcel Duchamp
Martin Luther
Coco Chanel
Claire McArdell
Ellen Willis
Frank Lloyd Wright
I.F. Stone
Jessica Mitford
Bobby Seale
Huey P. Newton
David Dellinger
Euripides
Zero Mostel
Holland-Dozier-Holland
Theresa Duncan (and that's for her work, on its merits, not her early demise.)

compared2what? · Post by **compared2what?** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 3:01 pm

How could I have forgotten the man who doesn't know he's my boyfriend?

Stephen Colbert

annie aronburg · Post by **annie aronburg** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 3:02 pm

compared2what? wrote:Theresa Duncan (and that's for her work, on its merits, not her early demise.)

Though I would never have heard about her if she had not died.

Nothing's been the same since.....

Annie

theeKultleeder · Post by **theeKultleeder** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 3:20 pm

I hate these kinda questions. My favorite color yesterday is forgotten tomorrow, but here we go:

Seventhsonjr · Post by **Seventhsonjr** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 3:30 pm

In no particular order:

Dr. Ernest Sternglass (anti-nuke whistleblower)
MLK
Malcolm X
Che Guevara
JFK
RFK
Stephen Biko
Nelson Mandela
Dr. Helen Caldicott
Al Gore
Tania (Che's lover, murder4ed by the CIA/KGB by his side)
Rachel Corrie
Paul Wellstone
Moon Face Bear
William Kunstler
James Hatfield
Ghandi
my father and mother (my dad worked with the antiNazi resistance with my mom's undying support - they risked their lives over this)

and my friend Atty Paul Sanford, murdered just a year ago (christmas eve 2006) after asserting at a white house press conference that Karl Rove's outing of Valerie Plame was treason.

Edited to add:

Konrad Heiden and Lion Feuchtwanger, two of the earliest active antiNazi writers placed on Hitler's most wanted death lists and who escaped to the US where they wrote and documented the fascism of Hitler's 3rd Reich and its ties to wall street.

Jean Martel/Moulin - leader of the antiNazi French resistance, tortured to death by Klaus Barbie after being likely set up by Allen Dulles who was head of the OSS while secretly financing Hitler before, during and after the war with Bush financial backing.

Varian Fry (American leader of the European antiNazi resistance) along with Charles Fawcett, Miriam Davenport, Mary Jane Gold, Andre Breton, and many others (see his book "Surrender on Demand)

theeKultleeder · Post by **theeKultleeder** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 3:36 pm

Seventhsonjr wrote:and my friend Atty Paul Sanford, murdered just a year ago (christmas eve 2006) after asserting at a white house press conference that Karl Rove's outing of Valerie Plame was treason.

That's fucked. Someone should write a story about it. You should submit info (with family's permission) to a journalist we trust around here.

Reminds me of I worked with a lady who says her friend in college was a major Gulf "War" One protester who was harassed and went crazy - like hospitalized crazy - who remains disturbed and medicated to this day. But she refused to give me any more info or go on the record. She was scared.

ShinShinKid · Post by **ShinShinKid** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 4:00 pm

C. Wright Mills
Woody Guthrie
Yamada Yoshitaka Sensei
Sifu Augustine Fong
The Little Prince

Honorable Mention (from roughly the same category):

Max Weber
Jeff Tweedy
Aoki Sensei
Bruce Lee
Winnie-the-Pooh

Anti Heroes:

Hitler
The Mentors
Ashida Kim
Torquemada (sic.)
Chapman

rigorousintuition.ca

Your Heroes? Random Top 5.

Your Heroes? Random Top 5.

off the top of my head

I second that emotion

A short list

Re: A short list