Is Bill Gates the greatest American ever?
What do Bill Gates, Richard Nixon, Dr. Phil, Helen Keller and Tom Cruise have in common?
According to America Online and the Discovery Channel, those five, and 95 others, are in the running to be voted the "Greatest American" of all time. The two media companies asked their constituents to submit nominees for that title and got more than 500,000 responses. The top 100 is heavily weighted toward music and movie types, from Elvis and Madonna to Clint Eastwood and George Lucas. There's also a smattering of athletes (Muhammed Ali, Tiger Woods), a hodge-podge of inventors and industrialists (Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison) and a healthy dose of presidents (Washington and Lincoln, of course, but also every occupant of the Oval Office from FDR to the present).
In an ad in this week's print issue of The New Yorker, the contest pits Microsoft co-founder Gates head-to-head with animator extraordinaire Walt Disney--both, the ad says, "changed the world with a mouse." If that's a key criterion for greatness, though, Disney could just as easily have been pitted against Pixar Animation and Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs, who's also in the top 100.
The Web site for the contest doesn't exactly live up to its promise of "in-depth" profiles of the nominees, but it does offer some "what you don't know" tidbits. Gates, for instance, apparently wasn't just an early whiz at computing; in addition, "at age 11, he could flawlessly recite Gospel chapters."
The Discovery Channel plans to use an "American Idol" style format for determining the No. 1 citizen from the 100 contenders. Its "Greatest American" program debuts June 5 and will work its way through the list, asking viewers to vote via phone, SMS and online.
If only we could hear Gates, Jobs and Martha Stewart warble their favorite top 40 hits from the 1980s.
Jonathan Skillings is managing editor of CNET News, based in the Boston bureau. He's been with CNET since 2000, after a decade in tech journalism at the IDG News Service, PC Week, and an AS/400 magazine. He's also been a soldier and a schoolteacher. E-mail Jon. 
