Overrated: The 11 Most Overrated Things Of The Decade (PHOTOS)

"Name the most overrated things of the decade!" was my brief. Fine, but I thought that the decade -- whatever it was called -- finished at the end of 2009 (just like the nineties had finished in 1999, or the eighties in 1989). Many words have already been wasted arguing about whether the decade finishes this year, or finished 12 months ago. It is in danger of becoming one of the year's most overrated debates.

Whenever the decade began, we can now see in hindsight that a few things were highly overrated. Most of us now agree that President Bush's post-9/11 approval rating was a little higher than necessary, and that President Obama, for all his promise, was not the Second Coming (and neither, even more strangely, was Tiger Woods). We now know that Marion Jones, Floyd Paterson and JT LeRoy might have required less adulation. Enthusiasm over the War in Iraq has waned, ethanol in our tanks is no longer expected to save the world, and everyone has stopped watching Heroes.

But a few people and things still need to be cut down to size...