Obama makes GQ’s list of ’25 Least Influential People Alive’

posted at 1:14 pm on November 26, 2011 by Howard Portnoy

How the mighty have fallen! Barack Obama—the man who vowed to slow the rise of the oceans, whose likeness was destined to appear on U.S. currency or Mt. Rushmore, who claimed to be able to bend steel with his bare hands—makes GQ‘s list of flunkies for 2011 (h/t Newsbusters).

Sad but true, the president is number 25 on the magazine’s “25 Least Influential People Alive.” He is down sharing the dregs with MSNBC host Ed Schultz, Newsweek editor Tina Brown, deposed Egyptian “President” Hosni Mubarak, disgraced C&W singer Hank Williams, Jr., and (GOP take notice!) House Majority Leader John Boehner.

If the fact of being included in a list of do-nothings and failures is not already a bitter enough pill for a man of Obama’s towering ego, the irony that he was GQ’s “Man of the Year” in 2008 and “Leader of the Year” in 2009 is surely not lost on him.

The issue has yet to hit the stands, but the website TVNewser offers a preview of things to come in its summary of Ed Schultz:

…Then there pundits like Ed Schultz. Do you watch “The Ed Show” on MSNBC? Of course you don’t. No one does. The only reason people watch “The Ed Show” is they’re working out in a hotel gym and they can’t find a staff member to change the channel to ESPN.

But that’s small potatoes compared with GQ’s assessment of Tina Brown, quoted by Forbes:

Brown spent 2011 transforming Newsweek from a magazine no one reads into a magazine no one reads but everyone despises. That’s what happens when you star-f**k the corpse of Princess Diana by Photoshopping her at age 50 for your cover, then do a separate Photoshop of her holding an iPhone, and then create a fake Facebook page for her that includes wall posts from Deepak Chopra. Did you know Tina and Di were friends? They were! This Photoshopped image of them having lunch with Stevie Nicks is proof!

While the president’s detractors will take perverse delight in GQ’s diss of him, I think a case could be made that he is one of the more influential people alive today. Consider: Under his stewardship, the nation’s AAA credit rating was downgraded by Standard & Poor’s for the first time ever. By January of 2013, he will have added as much debt as all 43 prior presidents combined. Finally on his watch, the poverty level in the U.S. has reached an all-time high.

I would contend that none of these “achievements” would be possible under a leader who lacked influence. Barack Obama has proved to be powerfully influential in much the way plague and natural disasters have impacted the lives of the many.

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