TV’s Greatest Icon…

Updated on November 6, 2007 By Ken Begg 10 Comments

Entertainment Weekly’s website is running a poll allowing you to pick TV’s Greatest Icon, presumably the focus of an upcoming print article. 

They blurb this in their latest issue, and in a few short sentences show why a would-be hipster magazine like EW is exactly the wrong forum for this sort of thing.  “Who’s the ultimate TV icon?  Sarah Jessica Parker (above)?  Ophrah Winfrey?  Bob Hope?” 

Sarah Jessica Parker?!  She starred on a show that was watched by a few million people, although admittedly the exact sort of people who work at magazines like EW.  What I love is the “(above)”.  Her photo accompanies the blurb, but lest we don’t recognize The Greatest TV Icon ever, they make sure we know that picture is of Parker and not Winfrey or Bob Hope.

Oprah is one of a bare handful of modern true TV icons, along with Letterman.  The problem with EW–and this was especially obvious some years ago when their Greatest Movie Stars list featured people like Reese Witherspoon or whatever–is that they have little cultural memory.  TV was at its greatest influence in the early days, and as with movies, most of the icons come from that period, with their numbers receding as time marches along.  That pretty much is the nature of icons, isn’t it?  Parker?  Please.

Lucy.  Johnny Carson.  Ralph Kramden.  Rod Serling.  Milton Berle.  Archie Bunker.  The Fonz.  Homer Simpson.  (Who will win, I suspect, since he’s an actual icon, and the people voting will actually know who he is.)  You have to get several hundred names further down on that list before people like Parker start showing up.

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  • Andrew

    If you are talking early days, try Jack Paar, or Steve Allen. Maybe Liberace. Merv Griffin too. Dick Cavett as well. How about the omnipresent, if annoying, Tom Snyder.

    Though I detest his politics, “Uncle Walt” Cronkite deserves a slot too. And perhaps David Brinkley. And how about Edward R. Murrow? (Unless newsmen are excluded.)

    Of course Dick Clark should get a mention too, between Bandstand and his new year’s tradition.

    Then again, because the magazine is more oriented toward a particular view of “entertainment”, I think the newsmen and talk show hosts in the list above would have flown under EW’s radar, even if EW’s view wasn’t set myopically on post-Reagan figures.

  • Ericb

    Jeez, Sarah Jessica Parker? How clueless. If you want to be middlebrow hip at least go for something from the Supranos or Twin Peaks. Lazy hipster wannabes.

  • Yes, the names just rattle off.

    Hell, the original Star Trek had a good six or eight characters more iconic than Sarah Jessica Parker.

  • “Her photo accompanies the blurb, but lest we don’t recognize The Greatest TV Icon ever, they make sure we know that picture is of Parker and not Winfrey or Bob Hope.”

    Now that’s funny. I’d like to meet the editor who made that decision.

  • R. Dittmar

    This is from many a year ago, but still makes me laugh out loud:

    http://www.fametracker.com/fame_audit/parker_sarah_jessica.php

    I’ve been waiting for a reason to call someone Lee Harvey Schnozzwald ever since.

  • Wow, that’s both hilarious and brutal, in equal measure. (And, I must admit, pretty much spot on from my perspective.)

  • Dan Coyle

    I think Peter Griffin of Family Guy said it best: “They let Sarah Jessica Parker on TV, and she looks like a FOOT!”

    Parker not only played a thoroughly unlikable character, but the most unlikable out of those four, which is no small feat.

  • EW used to have a feature on the last page where they talked about historical events in entertainment, some of them going back decades. It was easily the best part of the magazine, precisely because someone had to do some research to write it.

    They replaced it with Joel Stein, a man whose lack of talent was equal only to his self-absorbtion. (In other words, kind of an ideal for them.)

  • KeithB

    Don’t be silly, clearly this is for her work on “Square Pegs”, not anything recent!

  • The Rev. D.D.

    I don’t understand the appeal of SJP or her character. Definitely not any sort of icon, and it’s an insult to actual icons to be lumped in with her.