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Time magazine released their annual 100 Most Influential list today and while it's mostly your typical mishmash of heads of state, captains of industry, and stars of stage and screen, there are a few things about this year's list that strike us as particularly wrong.
They are as follows:
1. Ugh, Chelsea Handler. Obviously Time picks a few lighthearted people every year and obviously this list isn't actually an indicator of anything really, but still why did they have to go and pick Chelsea Handler? She's the unfunniest of the unfunny, someone who trades in cheap, dated insults and calls it comedy and who brings guests on her show, Chelsea Lately, who are even worse than she is. Plus, in the grand-spirit of Handler's datedness, doesn't putting her on a list of influential people in 2012 seem a bit off? Sure her talk show is still popular enough, but her sitcom Are You There, Chelsea? tanked and she seems to have retreated from the cultural conversation in the few years since her real heyday. The fact that she's something of a producing/business mogul is certainly interesting, but this still feels like a lazy choice.
2. Mitt Romney is on the list, because of course, he's basically the official Republican candidate for president this year, which is pretty influential, but his little writeup is penned by none other than Bill Bain, Romney's old boss at the ominously named "creative destruction" company Bain Capital. Aren't they trying to humanize this guy, make him seem not so much like a younger, Mormoner Ebenezer Scrooge? Having his old mentor Lord Bain from Bain Industries write a little rhapsody for him is not exactly sprinkling him with the salt of the earth. If the Romney campaign had any say in who wrote this thing, they did not make the best choice. Couldn't someone a little more blue collar have written something nice about him? Like maybe one of his servants? Oh, wait, yup, same problem, huh?