Time 100: Listen to the 90 percent
Time Magazine released a list of selections for the world’s most influential 100 people in the May 14, 2007 issue. I have to thank the magazine. Usually I get this many chuckles from repeat episodes of the TV show “Seinfeld.�
Some of the names made me want to ask the editors at Time, “What are you guys smoking?� In keeping with my question, Kate Moss is a selectee. Americans can now rest easy knowing this soda straw thin model and alleged drug aficionado is a top influential. “Hip is hard,� reads the text describing Moss. Put that sound bite right up there with other words to live by.
The list is dappled with Democrats. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is up first, underscored by commentary that would make a deity blush. Variations on the adjective “audacious� appear in abundance. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is a selectee. In a monstrous stroke of irony, former Speaker of the House and Republican icon Newt Gingrich wrote the story about her. No list of Democratic stellars would be complete without Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and the greenest mayor in the land, Michael Bloomberg, who promises to transform New York from a world-class concoction of pollutants to an environmentally friendly city. With green in mind, former Vice-President Al Gore is named.
The major name missing from the Time 100—President George Bush of our own United States. I think the magazine did Bush a favor. Others in the “Leaders and Revolutionaries� section include protectors of personal freedom like Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader. With an eye on democracy, the magazine also selected President Hu Jintao of China. And everyone’s favorite terrorist, Osama bin Laden, influencing the world while reportedly attached to a dialysis machine, reportedly still alive somewhere in a Middle Eastern cave, is up there. Natch.
If a magazine really wanted to select 100 influential people, you’d think the president of the world’s greatest country, a country pouring vast sums of aid into every other country with a tsunami, earthquake or record levels of AIDS would be included.
You’d also think the world’s greatest news influencer, Matt Drudge, would be up there.
The May 28 issue of the magazine notes that The Time 100 was the biggest mail-getter in that particular issue. Further noted: 90 percent of respondents asked “How could you have excluded President George W. Bush?�
It only makes sense when you ask, “What (reportedly) are they smoking?â€? Drugs (reportedly) do a lot to reduce short-term memory, I’ve heard. –Kay B. Day
(Photo of the president by Shealah Craighead from Press Photos at the White House Web site.)
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