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Time Magazine Names A 100 Most Influential People: How On Earth Did They Pick Them?

May 4, 2008

What is wrong with people who run Time magazine? Do they live in a different world or what? They come up with a list of a hundred most influential people in the world – I stress the words ‘influential’ and ‘world’ here – and half of these titans of influence shouldn’t even be considered for the top thousand.

I’ve already had a very public clash with Time magazine once when it named President Vladimir Putin as Man of the Year. I went on BBC’s Radio Four The World Tonight programme and told Time’s European editor, who was taking part in it, that I was outraged by their choice. Putin, I said then, had done nothing to contribute to the stability in Russia, as the magazine was claiming. In fact, I thundered, Putin brought even more instability. Terrorism during his years in power became a much bigger threat; a civil war was flaring in the south of the country; corruption got out of control completely and social tension was growing due to widespread poverty and despair. The most damning factor of all was that during Putin’s reign the Russian population had decreased by about 7.5 million and the average life expectancy among men plummeted to 58 years. It was an outrage, I said, that Time magazine could even contemplate giving Man of the Year award to a man like Putin.

And now Time comes up with a list of a hundred people who are supposed to be the most influential in the whole wide world. And President Putin is included in that list, coming second after the Dalai Lama in the section Leaders & Revolutionaries. The most interesting thing is that Putin’s intro is written by none other than Madeleine Albright, former US secretary of State, who had played a crucial role in destroying any chance of NATO reaching an agreement with former Yugoslavia which resulted in bombings of innocent civilians in and around Belgrade. This is a woman who, as a small child, had been saved from the Nazis during the war by a family of Serbs. And this is the same woman who had betrayed the Serbian nation many years later. Albright, in her intro, praises Putin as ‘shrewd, confident, hard-working, patriotic and ingratiating’. I believe that the Russian people should be very worried: such praise from an individual like Albright is in fact a damning indictment of just how seriously flawed Putin really is, and should be removed from power as quickly as possible.

As regards Putin’s influence I would just say this: he has proven to be a loyal servant of the people who had installed him in the Kremlin. His influence goes as far as his masters will allow and no further.

Dalai Lama, as I have already mentioned, precedes Putin in the section Leaders & Revolutionaries. I’m sorry, but I somehow don’t see him as very influential. It’s not like he has managed to come up with anything even resembling a solution for Tibet. And sending monks to battle it out with the Chinese security forces was not a great idea either. Not to mention that offering to resign when things got really hot wasn’t the wisest move. And how can a spiritual leader resign anyway? It sounds weird, doesn’t it? Here is a quote from the brief introduction written by Deepak Chopra, who had met the Dalai Lama several times. ‘The most inspiring thing he ever told me,’ writes Chopra, ‘was to ignore all organised faiths and keep to the road of higher consciousness. “Without relying on religion, we look to common sense, common experience and the findings of science for understanding”, he said.’

Pure paganism, if you ask me. If that’s what the Dalai Lama really thinks, I pity the poor Tibetans and the silly people who take spiritual guidance from him.

The section on Leaders & Revolutionaries includes, for some unknown reason, the three presidential candidates in the US election campaign. I have a question to Time’s editors: if only one of them is going to become president, how come all of them are so influential? I can understand current US President George Bush being there because he can still cause a lot of grief to the world by starting another war, for example. And I can understand the presence on the list of Hu Jintao, the Chinese leader, who’s got influence coming out of his ears. But Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and John McCain? Honestly, may be one of them will be influential next year, but definitely not all three of them, and not at present. I also think that Sonia Ghandi was a rather strange choice, considering that she has pulled out of politics for good, and Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister, whose only claim to fame was that he said ‘sorry’ to the Aborigines, should have probably been kept out of the list altogether.

I can understand Ben Bernanke being there, the US Federal Reserve chairman, and even Jacob Zuma, who will become the next president of South Africa, but why on earth would Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, be there? or Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Iraqi Shiite cleric, or Michelle Bachelet, president of Chile? What’s so special about them that makes them the most influential people in the world? In the whole wide world, that is, not just in their respective countries. My objection to Gates, by the way, is based on the simple fact that he takes orders from the likes of Vice-President Dick Cheney or is advised by military commanders. So how exactly is his influence manifesting itself on the world stage? And if the Chilean president is in the list, where then is Hugo Chavez who runs a country which is the fifth biggest producer of oil in the world? It just doesn’t make sense.

And then there is the section of Heroes & Pioneers. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie come first in that section, praised for their goodwill ambassadorship around the world. Oprah Winfrey is there, the daytime TV queen, and Mia Farrow, the actress, and, for some unknown reason, former tennis player Andre Agassi and singer Peter Gabriel. These are all people, you see, who have enormous influence in the world. Actors, singers, former sportsmen and TV presenters, according to Time, are the most influential people you can find. Great, just great.

Most remarkably, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair appears in the section of Heroes & Pioneers although it is difficult to establish how he qualifies for either category. His intro is written by, none other, than former US President Bill Clinton. Clinton praises his friend Blair for not taking time out with his family after leaving office and becoming a Middle East envoy to the Quartet of nations who are trying to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli issue. Everyone knows that nothing will come out of these efforts in the foreseeable future and still Tony Blair, that great opportunist, jumps at the chance to stay in the public eye and takes on a job which he is totally unfit for because of his disgraceful role in starting the war against Iraq. But does he care? Of course he doesn’t. He knows perfectly well that he can always blame either the Palestinians or the Israelis for his failure in reaching any sort of deal. Does he have any serious influence now? Of course he doesn’t. It’s the money he is primarily interested in. He’s always been in it for the money, you know.

I’ll skip the section Scientists & Thinkers although I must confess I found it very odd to find people like Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, in there (is he a scientists or a thinker?) and Mark Zuckerberg the creator of that dreadful thing called Facebook which allows all those sad non-entities to prove to the world that they matter.

In the Artists & Entertainers section you find Lorne Michaeils, creator and producer of that amateurish and politically correct TV rubbish called Saturday Night Live, and Robert Downey Jr, who is much better known for his drug problems than for his acting (who the hell was or still is Robert Downey Snr?). Then there is Mariah Carey, the singer who is obsessed with showing off her body in every video clip she makes, and Khaled Hosseini, who has written two politically correct books on Afghanistan (read my review of his second book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, in the Reviews section of this website). There is also George Clooney, the actor who often forgets that being handsome doesn’t really mean that he can act abysmally and people won’t notice.

And then there is the comedian Chris Rock. I’m sorry, but I find Rock unfunny; unfunny and very politically correct, in a politically incorrect sort of way. He was one of the first stand-up comedians who started saying that he’d be very surprised if Barack Obama isn’t shot if he’s elected president. Nice one, Chris! Gets you into the top ten of the most adored entertainers of the left straight away. If that is not inciting racial hatred, I don’t know what is. And his voice, boy, does Chris Rock have an irritating high pitched voice! And his acting sucks big time too. But, according to Time magazine, this guy is seriously influential.

In the Builders & Titans section I don’t know many of the people but I found it very strange that the chief executive of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, is presented as a woman who ‘has helped make healthiness and sustainability part of the company’s mission.’ Excuse me, but isn’t it the company that produces fizzy drinks that tend to damage people’s health? The pop group Radiohead are also mentioned in this section for allowing their fans to download their latest album In Rainbows for free. Have you ever listened to Radiohead? No? Well, I can tell you one thing about them: they were probably right to allow people to download their songs for free; saved them the embarrassment for having a huge flop.

Most of the people in the section Builders & Titans are big corporate bosses and I’ll be honest with you – I never liked big corporate bosses. I’ve met quite a few of them in my life and wasn’t impressed by any of them.

It’s a strange world that people who run Time magazine inhibit. A very strange world indeed.

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