The 'world' doesn't know about Karl Rove and Ted Haggard. Hate directed towards Clinton or Bush for actions as president way eclipses that for those other names. I think Bush is a good example though because everyone can agree to dislike him across almost all ideological spectra and the hate for him is so intense and current rather than historical.

If we were talking non-real persons 'Satan' would top the list easily.

I think this is more interesting if you restrict 'world' to like educated middle-class people or 'people who watch western TV' or something.

OK, limited to 'educated Westerners'... who, then?

This topic is auto-Godwin-ing ... Hitler, of course.

Also among semi-recent historicals, I would think that even most modern day Communists would agree that Stalin and Mao gave their cause a bad name.

Currently, nobody has sought out the title of 'most hated' more than that Idolator, Simon Cowell.

No Satanic Evangelical today can match the total creepitude of the late Unreverend Jim Jones.

And come on, is there anybody living who still admits to liking Paris Hilton?

While universally hated by thinking people, Rush, O'Reilly and their ilk still have enough support among the non-thinking to get paid big bucks for advertising on their shows.

But Fred Phelps has alienated the entire nation; which is no small accomplishment.

If we were talking non-real persons 'Satan' would top the list easily.

But ol' Beelzebub is not considered non-real by billions of people, a few of whom defend him (in the ultimate act of contrarianism) and many who oppose him have an undue respect for him as a 'powerful adversary'.

Paris Hilton does have her defenders; mostly impressionable young women.

I think Paris Hilton is pretty great. I also like Marion Barry and R. Kelly.

Then billions of people need to get their heads out of their assholes and start living in the real world.

Marion Barry I'd do a rock with any day of the week.

Charles Taylor
Idi Amin
...

George Steinbrenner

Sting? I guess not. But it should be Sting.

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Michael Winner.

Funny you should ask. I was at a Cub's game (I know, *shudder*) earlier in the week, when they were playing the Giants. Barry Bonds has been in a slump and was sitting out the game. In the seventh inning, with the game tied, the Cubs pitcher got in trouble. Two men on, one out, throwing balls like a frat boy at closing time. No sooner had my friend said: "They're going to bring in Bonds" than we saw him come striding out of the dugout, bat cocked against his shoulder.

Instantly...and I mean instantly, all 41,000 people in Wrigley Field started booing. I have never heard such a sound in my life. Immediately, I felt as if I was in some medieval morality play and the devil had just entered scene...this enormous black man waving a very large stick being booed and hissed by an almost entirely white audience. The booing went on for about 10 minutes as the Cubs scrambled to bring in a fresh pitcher. Bonds pawed at the on deck circle, then took a few pitches before lining out to left field. The crowd continued booing, but you could feel their disappointment at not having had the chance to spit on his next step toward #756.

Baseball at its best always feels to me like the purest essence of American society transmuted into a three hour drama on a green diamond. I love it for its diversity, its pacing, its tension between strategy and brute aggression, its boredom punctuated by instants of astonishing grace. But if you buy into that, if you make the game about something more than just the movement of a ball on grass, then moments like Barry Bonds walking out onto the grass at Wrigley are going to hit you with a shock.

It was ugly...to see a man, no matter how unpleasant he might be, turned into a symbol for something else. As 41,000 people were pouring invective on him, it had very little to do with Hank Aaron's record or with BALCO. It had very much to do with 41,000 mostly white people permitting themselves a sort of "two minutes' hate" on a big, bad black man. For 10 minutes, Barry Bonds was Emmanuel Goldstein. He was Osama bin Laden. He was O.J. Simpson, Mike Tyson and Willie Horton all wrapped up into one.

Weird, isn't it? Floyd Landis is nothing more than a "disgraced athlete" while someone like Barry Bonds becomes a national scapegoat, a living reflex of our own luciferian shame.

felix betachat: it's strange, while I respect Bonds' obvious athletic gifts, I never liked him much even pre-steroid scandal. Even now that he's chasing the record I find myself thinking "He's no Babe Ruth, He's no Hank aaron, He's no Willie Mays."

I'd also say that the racial angle is stretching it a bit. It's a baseball game, riding the opposing teams star is pretty much part of the game.

Look, I'm no fan of Barry Bonds either. I think he's an unpleasant and unsportsmanlike player. And, as a Sox fan, I know what riding the other team looks and sounds like. Honestly, this was something completely different. It was an enormous crowd coalescing into a single mass around its collective enjoyment of a single, powerful emotion. It's a known phenomenon. Freud and Durkheim wrote about it. Watch videos of the Nuremberg rallies if you want to see what a really extreme case of it looks like.

I'll put it to you this way: Everybody pretty much knows that Roger Clemens was doped. But he still retains that aura of rugged, combative sportsmanship. You might dislike what he did to become what he is, and you might dislike his public persona, but he never became a lightning rod the way Barry Bonds has been. Why is that?

Possibly because he was never all that well liked to begin with. He gave off this yuppie prince aura that people actively disliked. and plenty of non-black athletes have been equally despised by fans: Jose Canseco, Bill Laimbeer, Kevin McHale.

I had to look up Fred Phelps, despicable but he doesn't have the Q Factor to be 'most hated'.

I'd like to agree with you, jonmc, but this poll about about opinions on Bonds by race gives me pause. The poll is hardly conclusive and, personally, I'm not really sure how I feel about Bonds overall.

hey, felix betachat! welcome back. you need to propose a meet-up to tell us tales about your travels

I am going to place my vote for Yasser Arafat. Lots of people, even non-English speaking ones hate that guy. If Hitler is Emperor Douchebag, then Arafat has to at least be a general in his army. A four-star douchebag general.

Hey, good to be back! Are you going to the meetup next Friday? I'm considering it...depends on how much writing I get done this week. If I'm not there, then the next one for sure.

next Friday: yes. unless I end up at Zombies From the Beyond at the Athenaeum Theatre

Pope Benedict.

If Ann and Robert hooked up, their spawn would have to be named Damien Coulter-Mugabe.