Aside

The real 100 most influential people of 2010

9 May 2010

Time magazine’s 2010 list of the 100 most influential people is an absolute joke. Lady Gaga? Anyone who’s qualifications include “diva” are automatically disqualified. Sandra Bullock? Snooki? Are these really the “women” we want to put on a pedestal for our youth to emulate? And so it doesn’t look like I’m just tearing down women on the list, you can’t be serious about Neil Patrick Harris? And Dan Coudreaut, really? The head chef of McDonald’s? You can’t be serious.

Since Time’s list is obviously a joke (I can’t really blame them since you need to sell copies by any means necessary in today’s print publishing world) I feel it would be a disservice to America and the world if a real list wasn’t put out. So below, compiled by me and me alone, is the real 2010 list of the 100 most influential people. They’re in no particular order, but are organized by category.

Entertainment

  1. Rupert Murdoch
  2. Conan O’Brien
  3. David Simon
  4. Bill Maher
  5. Oprah Winfrey
  6. Kathryn Bigelow
  7. John Stewart
  8. Rush Limbaugh
  9. Stephen Colbert
  10. Ellen DeGeneres
  11. Jay Leno
  12. J.J. Abrams and Carlton Cuse
  13. Seth MacFarlane
  14. Rain
  15. Michael Lewis
  16. Banksy
  17. Glenn Beck
  18. James Cameron
  19. Jeff Zucker
  20. Jay-Z
  21. Clint Eastwood
  22. Ricky Gervais
  23. Anna Wintour
  24. Michael Pollan
  25. Andrew Breitbart
  26. Ashton Kutcher
  27. Roger Ailes
  28. Judd Apatow
  29. Quentin Tarantino
  30. Christiane Amanpour

Finance

  1. Paul Volker
  2. Timothy Geithner
  3. Ben Bernanke
  4. Henry Paulson
  5. Jim Cramer
  6. Lloyd Blankfien
  7. Shiela Bair
  8. Vikram Pandit
  9. Warren Buffett
  10. Mohamed El-Erian
  11. Elizabeth Warren
  12. Carlos Slim Helú
  13. Lawrence Summers
  14. Akio Toyoda
  15. Mikhail Prokhorov

Politics

  1. Barack Obama
  2. Hillary Clinton
  3. George W. Bush
  4. Gordon Brown
  5. Sarah Palin
  6. Osama Bin Laden
  7. Nicolas Sarkozy
  8. Muammar Gaddafi
  9. Michele Obama
  10. Bill Clinton
  11. Al Gore
  12. Manmohan Singh
  13. John Roberts
  14. Stanley McChrystal
  15. Mike Mullen
  16. Olympia Snowe
  17. Yukio Hatoyama
  18. Arnold Schwarzenegger
  19. Lisa Jackson
  20. Angela Merkel
  21. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
  22. Cory Booker
  23. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
  24. Mir-Hossein Mousavi
  25. Zahra Rahnavard
  26. Benjamin Netanyahu
  27. Anwar al-Awlaki

Sports

Technology

  1. Bill Gates
  2. Steve Jobs
  3. Mark Zuckerberg
  4. Dennis Crowley
  5. Tim Westergren
  6. Jeff Bezos
  7. Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone
  8. J.T. Wang
  9. Robin Li
  10. Elon Musk

Due to the timing of a recently released documentary by HBO, posthumous recognition goes to Sérgio Vieira de Mello.