June 13, 200323 yr link Homer vies with presidents to be greatest American KAREN MCVEIGH A BEER-swilling, bumbling cartoon father of three is running neck and neck with five US presidents, one of America?s leading statesmen, its most famous civil rights leader, a Sixties folk singer and a Seventies children?s television icon in a survey to find the greatest American ever. Readers of BBC News Online have come up with their top ten Americans, living or dead. Heavy with historical figures, the list has only four living characters - that is, if you count Matt Groening?s creation, the much-loved Homer Simpson. There was not a single woman in the top ten. Many of those chosen, such as Thomas Jefferson, the third US president, who drafted the Declaration of Independence; the black civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King; and Benjamin Franklin, the statesman and scientist who helped with the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, appear to reflect British admiration for American ideals of freedom and equality. Others include the singer Bob Dylan, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D Roosevelt, and, bizarrely, Mr T, from the television series, The A-Team. Think our image abroad is slightly askew? later........
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