To me, there will always be the Hawking that blew my mind with A Brief History of Time and led me into other books like Hyperspace and others of the same genre as a kid.
The later in life Hawking really sold that earlier one out. He became like DeGrasse Tyson, and thought we needed to know about things he knew little about. He forgot the science and went for the dollar bills and fame.
For me, it’s like the guy that met a childhood hero, only to regret it.
Listening to him and the Fraud preach their perversions to me in the same era turned me off to anything “Wheels” had to say.
John Glenn and Capt. Sully come to mind as well.
This sounds about right. The difference is that Hawking made legitimate and important (though the extent of the latter is exaggerated by a worshipful media and fanbase) contributions to astrophysics in his early days, while DeGrasse Tyson was, from what I understand, from the very beginning a researcher of mediocre accomplishment and importance who went from director of a planetarium to a celebrity by virtue of his race and telegenic personality.