I was about to respond to somebody with "She's not exactly Mother Theresa"

[conuly]

when I remembered that a. Mother Theresa isn't the best example and b. in that place, people probably know that.

Opinion time! What (female) name should I use when disparagingly comparing a person to a really good, philanthropic person? Should be somebody recognizable, with no fairly well-known bad behavior. No propping up corrupt dictators, no comments about how the suffering of the poor is "beautiful", no hypocrisy, and so on.

Edit: No people who are mostly famous for having died in awful ways, or otherwise being in the wrong place at the wrong time, especially if they are still (or died when they were) minors and young adults and didn't have much of a chance to be particularly good or bad people.

Comments

[highlyeccentric]

I was going to suggest 'Florence Nightingale' but had the foresight to google 'florence nightingale problematic' first.

[dark_phoenix54]

I"ve got to keep an eye on this entry; that's a factoid I need, too! I still blurt out the Mother T thing, and then pull up short when I think about how miserably she treated the dying.

[jtthomas]

Hmm. Whoopi Goldberg? Google... Bill Cosby defender, but that's all she has against her, and there's a whole lot for her.

Elizabeth Warren sets a good record for "how to apologize" given the raised-thinking-she-had-a-whole-lot-of-Native-American-heritage thing.

Definitely wouldn't recommend Julie d'Aubigny, given the duelling and all, but getting her girlfriend out of a convent by burning it to the ground is definitely memorable.

[alexseanchai]

Malala Yousafzai

[redbird]

Eleanor Roosevelt?

[conuly]

As per my addendum, no. Still a young adult, mostly famous for the bad luck of being in a place where it's hard for girls to get an education and then getting one anyway. Which, not to downplay it, is hard! but not what I'm looking for. In fact, I was specifically thinking of her and Anne Frank when I made that edit.

[alexseanchai]

...see I was reading your edit to rule out people like Anne Frank, but not living activists with substantial name recognition and track record such as Malala Yousafzai. I'd hesitate over Emma Gonzalez, because her track record is years shorter and her name is much less recognizable if I don't mention Parkland, but I thought you were ruling in Yousafzai.

[sathari]

Marian Wright Edelman? I didn't find anything awful about her, and many, many good and impressive things.

[chanter1944]

+about 100

I was going to say Graca Machel, but Malala, yes. :)

Edited on seeing downthread conversation. ... Or not. Never mind.

[conuly]

She's 21! That makes her a young adult. One who was really unlucky in where she happened to live as an adolescent and who all else was there.

[conuly]

Not to say that she isn't hard-working, brave, and generally good-hearted. It's just that sometimes people surprise you as they move from early adulthood to later adulthood, but they're less likely to surprise you after the age of 25 or 30 or so.

[amaebi]

Helen Keller would be good, except that she's best known for her disabilities, her activism having been largely suppressed.

[amaebi]

Notorious RBG.

[archersangel]

i was going to say a saint or some sort, but 1. i'm a bad Catholic & can't think of any. & 2. most are probably problematic in some way, shape or form.

[alexseanchai]

still seeing a relevant distinction between people like Frank, whose story is mostly about how she got dead, and people like Gonzalez and Yousafzai, whose phenomenal ill luck is the beginning of her story but nowhere near the end of it, but okay

AOC?

[conuly]

They're also young enough that I don't want to pin a "good person" or "bad person" label on them. They could have literally cured cancer AND saved the whales AND brought peace to the middle east and I'd be "Okay, but let's hold on and see what sort of people they are at 30-ish."

[alexseanchai]

okay, that makes sense

[conuly]

I suppose I could be like "She's not exactly a renowned social activist like Helen Keller"

[conuly]

There's an idea.

[conuly]

The only one I remember off the top of my head is Lucy, because she has her eyeballs on a plate. (No, I don't remember why.)

[conuly]

It's sort of a two-fer reason, crammed into a small package.

[conuly]

That's a thought.

[killing_rose]

Noor Khan.

[senmut]

Maya Angelou?

[jessie_c]

Princess Di? She did a whole bunch of good stuff in her short lifetime.