Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Most Influential Man in America?

I debated about mentioning this. However, the results of the survey are floating all over the Internet and I'm sure it'll be talked about on radio shows for days, weeks, and (where news is slow) in some cases months to come.

Today a website called AskMen.com revealed the results of their annual "Most Influential Men" list. According to the website, Jon Stewart is the most influential man in America.

Really? I really don't think AskMen.com is a very reliable source of information. Even though it has actual paid writers on staff, the issues discussed about (outside of health matters) are often less reliable than information found on Wikipedia. Also, other than the gimmicks they do, such as this annual list, no one even knows the website exists.

That aside, they rank Jon Stewart as the most influential man in America. There's also three people listed in their top ten that I've never heard of before: #8 Graydon Carter, #9 Jose Mourinho, and #10 Elon Musk. I'm an avid reader and still read newspapers and magazines in addition to books. I'll be the first to admit that there's so much I don't know and that I'm not as cultured or experienced as many others. Still, you would think I'd of heard of all the people in the top ten list of the most influential men in America. But #8, #9, and #10 were completely unknowns. After doing some research I discovered that Carter is the editor for Vanity Fair, Mourinho is a soccer coach, and Musk is the co-founder of PayPal. That makes sense now because Vanity Fair is a magazine that no one reads, soccer is a sport that will never be popular in America, and unless you let people know you co-founded PayPal no one is going to know.

The real most influential man in America is a multi-billionaire (#35 of the richest people in the world) that the usual publications tend to ignore: George Soros. Soros broke the British pound in 1992 and made hundreds of millions of dollars off the stock market crash and Great Recession in 2008 (there is circumstantial evidence that he actually helped start the recession and cause the crash just so he could make more money). Soros isn't as recognizable as other American billionaires, but the guy has his hands in more political and media organizations (mostly progressive in nature) than anyone else in the country.

Jon Stewart is the most influential man in America? That's only because Soros wants you to think that. Wink, wink.

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