A recent poll asked participants to name who they thought was the most evil person in history. The results, while not entirely surprising, did say a lot about just how unlikeable Dick Cheney has become over the years.
What was surprising to some was the fact that Cheney didn’t top the list at number one, but that could be due to the fact that some of the participants were actually Republicans.
The results showed that Adolph Hitler was regarded as the number one most evil man in history, while Ghengis Khan came in at number 10. The results show two people not making it onto the top ten list but who, nevertheless, gave a bit of a surprise as runners up.
Number 13 was Hanibal Lecter, and number 15 was “that dance instructor who yells at the little girls on that reality show Dance Moms,” leading pollsters to believe that the group they were polling had difficulty separating fact from fantasy.
The complete results are as follows:
1. Adolph Hitler
2. Jeffrey Dahmer
3. Caligula
4. Queen Mary I, aka Queen Bloody Mary
5. Ivan the Terrible
6. Dick Cheney
7. Vlad the Impaler
8. Attila the Hun
9. Idi Amin
10. Ghengis Khan
It is interesting to note that only one woman, Queen Bloody Mary, made it onto the top ten list, and is the only evil person to ever have an alcoholic beverage named after them. (Harvey Wallbanger was annoying but he definitely was not evil).
Also interesting to note is that three of the top ten men on the list are identified not by first and last names but by first names followed by “the” and whatever they were, i.e. terrible (kisser? aim? what?), an impaler, and a Hun. This leads us to wonder if that were the norm for calling evil people by what they were, wouldn’t Cheney be better known as Dick the Dick?
Well, there’s always room for a top ten list of most evil women but it wouldn’t allow for the inclusion of any Dicks.
This list is very diverse in terms of age, race and national origin. What happened to gender? Can we please encourage more women? Sadly, I fear that Lucretia Borgia and others who deserve mention are simply not that well known anymore.