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Time Magazine unveils world’s 100 most influential people

Osama bin Laden,Pope Benedict XVI and Borat creator Sacha Baron Cohen are among a packed and varied field chosen by Time Magazine for this year’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

The fourth annual list, which is due to hit newsstands Friday, omits US President George W. Bush for the first time but includes Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Time Magazine?

Flap thought it went “out” in the 1970′s.

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The Michael Ramirez Files

In this photo released by Time, Inc., in New York, Saturday, Dec. 16, 2006, the Dec. 25, 2006 “Person of the Year” issue proclaims that “You” are Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.” Time, citing the shift from institutions to individuals as part of the criteria for selecting their “Person of the Year,” has named anyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web as their 2006 winner.

AP: Time Magazine’s Person of the Year: You

Congratulations! You are the Time magazine “Person of the Year.”

The annual honor for 2006 went to each and every one of us, as Time cited the shift from institutions to individuals – citizens of the new digital democracy, as the magazine put it. The winners this year were anyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web.

“If you choose an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people,” said Richard Stengel, who took over as Time’s managing editor earlier this year. “But if you choose millions of people, you don’t have to justify it to anyone.”

The magazine did cite 26 “People Who Mattered,” from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il to Pope Benedict XVI to the troika of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

And Stengel said if the magazine had decided to go with an individual, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the likely choice. “It just felt to me a little off selecting him,” Stengel said.

Indeed……..The blogosphere and internet is much more significant than Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-Il.

In fact, the blogosphere and internet media may well be those dictators downfall.

Thanks Time Magazine! You finally got ONE RIGHT!

Captain Ed says Time’s Award for this year was a Suck-Up Version.

At least, however, they made a decision and selected someone. The entire point of a Person of the Year is to acknowledge that some people play larger roles in history. Naming all of us may make us feel good about our anonymity, but in the end it’s either pandering to millions of readers or a refusal to take a stand on anyone. Choosing everyone is an abdication on the entire purpose of the project.

Even Salon did better than that — but not by much. In a year of so much turmoil and such electoral drama, they selected S. R. Sidarth, the opposition researcher for James Webb that got himself notoriety by being the target of George Allen’s weird “macaca” moment. It’s a silly selection by an unserious publication, perhaps much more demonstrative of Salon than it could possibly be of 2006.

Flap thinks Ed needs to chill out. After all this is time Magazine, what do you expect – something profound? Or accurate?

Others Blogging:

Tammy Bruce

Patterico

Hot Air

We’ve now heard from the Iraq Study Group, but we need the White House to become the Iraq Results Group.

Graphic: Time Magazine

Power Line: D. Gorton looks at Time’s Hillary photo

Our old friend D. Gorton is the former New York Times White House photographer has emailed us his analysis of the photo above that I found unusually unflattering and posted this morning in “While Washington slept.” Mr. Gorton writes:

The photo of Hillary Clinton in Time isn’t just “unflattering,” it’s a classic case of artful manipulation. Bear in mind that we have all been wary of the news media’s use of manipulated imagery in Iraq and especially during the recent Israeli Hezbollah conflict. But that’s not the only place where it happens, of course. I think that the OJ Simpson magazine cover on Time that portrayed him as a dark, black, villain comes to mind. Regardless of OJ’s suspected crimes, he was unfairly portrayed based upon a racist stereotype. Time later apologized for the image.

Read it all.

Flap is certainly not an expert in photography or Fauxtography but this photo is definitely unflattering.

Is Time telling the Clinton media machine that the gloves are off?