John Wayne
Source: wikipedia.org
When people think of some of the most emblematic Americans of all time, John Wayne is sure to be one of the names mentioned. The Academy Award-winning actor, director, and producer was a longtime incarnation of staunch American ideals and the rough and tough American way, especially in his Western films. Too bad everybody seems to gloss over the fact that he was very, very racist.
Although he was fluent in Spanish and all three of his wives were of Hispanic descent, the outspokenly conservative Wayne made many infamous comments about African Americans and Native Americans during his lengthy career. In a 1971 interview with Playboy, he said, “I believe in white supremacy, until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility […] I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from [the Native Americans…] Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”
Ranking: Racist
James Watson
Source: wikipedia.org
James Watson is a Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist and geneticist, famous for co-discovering the structure of DNA in 1953. When it comes to science, it doesn’t get much more legit than that. But if you haven’t heard much from Watson since, it’s because of the horribly elitist statements he’s prone to make in public, claiming that his hateful opinions are based in fact.
Though he was on the faculty at Harvard, was the director of the Human Genome Project, and served as president of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for 10 years, he resigned from his position and fell from grace after making comments about race, evolution, sexuality, and obesity. He has made comments inferring that Africans and descendants of the African continent are less intelligent than European counterparts, that women and black people are not as capable as white men in many jobs, that fat people and unintelligent people are somehow lesser human beings, and that discovering the “gay gene” could help expecting mothers make informed abortions, among many other elitist statements.
Not surprisingly, Watson has been described as one of the least pleasant people on the planet.
Ranking: Total Jerk
Empedocles
Source: wikipedia.org
This Greek philosopher, who died around 430 BC, is credited to this day with laying out the foundations for our understanding of light and vision; the four “elements” of fire, air, water, and earth; that air is a substance and not the lack thereof, among other discoveries and theories. Unfortunately, Empedocles was self-obsessed and believed that he was a god. In fact, he threw himself into a volcano to prove that he was divine or would be reincarnated as a god… it didn’t work out.
Ranking: Megalomaniac