Look at what’s happened to me-eee
I can’t believe it myself
Flying away on a wing and a prayer
It should have been somebody else…

Alas, this post isn't really about the 1980s TV series, “The Greatest American Hero.” But now that I've got everybody of a certain age humming the theme song, the last line of those lyrics may at least be apropos. The Discovery Channel has just completed a TV series called “The Greatest American,” in which viewers chose among founding fathers, great inventors, and talk show hosts to select and rank the 25 “Greatest Americans” of all time. The final episode aired on Sunday; in the last week of voting, Harvard Square was blanketed with flyers (along with other history-friendly addresses, I presume) urging Americans to exercise their democratic right by phone, text message, or email. The top five contenders were (not in order): Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ronald Reagan. I’ll let you click through to the Discovery Channel site to discover the big winner, but here’s a hint: it was probably not the Harvard Square vote that put him over the top.

“Greatest American” was modeled on the BBC’s “Greatest Briton,” a surprise hit in 2002. Winston Churchill beat out a very deep bench to win that contest over Princess Diana (third place) and the 19th century engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (carried into second place by a get-out-the-vote drive from students at Brunel University).

Copycat shows followed around the Commonwealth, with the kinds of ups and downs endemic to internet polls. In the race to name the “Greatest South African,” early voting was so lopsided in favor of Nelson Mandela that, nine weeks before the series ended, the South African Broadcasting Company went ahead and acclaimed Mandela as “indisputably the Greatest South African”—so viewers were really only voting to choose the Second Greatest South African. That coveted title went to golf star Gary Player; Mahatma Gandhi came in third. But the SABC pulled the plug on the series after an embarassingly strong showing by several pro-apartheid figures—Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, the chief architect of South African apartheid, came in 19th, and white supremacist Eugene Terre’Blanche came in 25th. The final episodes were never aired.

(I must admit I didn’t know about Mahatma Gandhi’s South African connection before now. There has not been a “Greatest Indian” TV series as far as I know; there was a magazine poll with that title, but Gandhi was ineligible, as the poll only covered the years after Indian independence. Mother Teresa ended up topping that list, and she was actually Albanian, so it seems churlish to refuse Gandhi the honor of being the Third Greatest South African.)

The fight to name the CBC’s “Greatest Canadian” was considerably more sedate (though there was understandable harrumphing at the Anglophone character of the final list). Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas won the number one spot, a nice endorsement of Canadian Medicare and social welfare at a time when they seem under regular attack. My man Alexander Graham Bell also made the Canadian top ten, squeaking by the Great One himself, which is not bad considering Bell wasn’t really Canadian. (Nor did not being American stop Bell from making the U.S. top 100.)

Anyway, the people have now spoken, and the 25 Greatest Americans are ranked at the Discovery Channel site, with the Greatest 100 also listed in alphabetical order. The enterprise has about as much historical rigor as American Idol, but hey, lists and contests are fun. Complaining about the choices is at once pointless and the entire point. Here, I’ll get you started: Dr. Phil???