If Leonard Bernstein or Aaron Copland or Adlai Stevenson or Albert Schweitzer or Dag Hammarskjöld or Sinclar Lewis or Carl Sandburg or Henry Steele Commager or Thomas Hart Benton was overrated a half-century ago, people around today have trouble placing their names.
John Steinbeck is still remembered -- largely as an example of someone who was overrated by an earlier generation. Maybe Picasso's name endures in a similar way.
My answer: I was going to say Walter Cronkite, who pretty much has been forgotten already, but maybe Edward R. Murrow is a better choice.
Murrow was one of those people whose reality never matched the myth that grew up around the name. Murrow was part and parcel of the commercial system but somehow got a reputation for saintly disinterest.
Walter Cronkite is someone who would have gladly surrendered our sovereignty to the UN. Gladly and without reservation.
As far as I am concerned, this country is a far better place with him not being able to advocate his viewpoints any more. There were a lot of people who respected, trusted and looked up to him, but they had no idea of his crackpot new world order points of view.
To paraphrase Richard Nixon’s opinion about Alger Hiss, if the American people really knew how “Uncle Walt” really felt, they would have boiled him in oil.