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Obama tops AskMen.com's Top 49 Most Influential Men for 2008
By April MacIntyre Oct 21, 2008, 15:30 GMT
Top Influential Man for 2008: candidate Barack Obama (C) and his maternal grandparents Stanley and Madelyn Dunham. Obama will leave the campaign trail later this week to travel to the side of his gravely ill 85-year-old grandmother in Hawaii -- just 11 days before the election. EPA/
American men dominate the latest AskMen.com survey of over 200,000 votes, which comprise the AskMen.com's Top 49 Most Influential Men list of 2008.
Titans of sport, media, fashion, auto industry, film, television and politics are represented on the list that explains the reasons behind their fame and claim to influence.
AskMen.com offered their voters a unique selection process: In addition to picking those candidates who had most influenced them, readers were allowed to offer commentary on why they chose their candidate and how they were influenced by them.
The final result is a LIST dominated by entrepreneurial and creative American men; 32 of the 49 are United States citizens.
American designer Tom Ford was over the moon at his inclusion: "It is a huge honor to be named one of the most influential men of the year by AskMen.com's readers. AskMen.com is a great site and I am happy to be in such wonderful company."
British David Beckham (#25), now a Los Angeles resident, was also pleased for the nods: "Thank you to all the AskMen.com readers who have again voted me in as one of the Top 49 Men."
The men ranged from Internet upstarts like Kevin Rose of DIGG.com (#49) to presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, who topped the list.
Rose ditched college to start his company, and the California kid secured enough venture capital to launch a series of web initiatives he’d been toying with, including Digg.com.
Musicians are represented too. Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., aka Lil Wayne (#48) kicked off his career in the late ‘90s by forming the hip-hop group Hot Boys with fellow rappers B.G., Turk and Juvenile. He has had brushes with the law, and was charged with four felonies after cops found a cache of drugs in his tour bus. The Louisiana native is enjoying a solid hit with his latest CD, Tha Carter III, which sold more than a million copies in its first week.
Television's top showrunners David Simon and Ed Burns (both tie at #42) were lauded for their great, gritty Baltimore yarn for HBO: "The Wire." The two men also produced the critically acclaimed "Generation Kill "(again for HBO).
Fans of "Fringe" and "Lost" turned in their votes for producer J.J. Abrams (#37)continued to produce riveting television that men especially love.
Truthiness slinger Stephen Colbert (#5) has popped high on the list; the South Carolina native and practicing Catholic makes a nightly run at skewering the right-wing American pundits in his "Colbert Report." In 2008, The Colbert Report won an Emmy for best writing, cementing him as one of late night’s best. That year, he also received his third Peabody Award.
King of the Internet police, TMZ creator and attorney Harvey Levin (#32) narrated the O.J. Simpson drama daily to rapt Los Angelenos during the bizarre O.J. slow-mo chase and trial time that tried to convict the ex footballer of the murder of ex wife Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. It was a drunken Mel Gibson and his anti-Semitic "Sugar Tits" ranting transcript that Levin somehow procured from a Lost Hills police report that put his TMZ on the map as a news breaker.
Politicians and Washington poobahs got their nods, Ben Bernanke (#19) and his support of a bailout of private financial institutions by the United States government got him on this list. AskMen.com notes, "his decisions in his role as chairman of the Federal Reserve during this tumultuous time have had an enormous impact on all our lives."
Sports figures like Olympian Michael Phelps (#3), soccer stars David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo (#9) and UFC's Dana White (#14) are given a spot on the list.
The UFC promoter is credited with the sport's incredible upswing, especially in the USA and the UK, which sees many fighters competing against each other. After a record $220 million in 2006 television orders, UFC is more popular than wrestling and boxing pay-per-view events.
AskMen.com notes their top listmaker Senator Barack Obama is tangible proof to the entire world that the propagation of the "American Dream" is not jingoism, but what in essence makes the country a true beacon of freedom, democracy, and tolerance for all.
AskMen.com writes of Obama: "For millions of young guys voting for the first time, Barack Obama isn’t a symbol of change -- he is the emissary of their legacy. His arrival tells them that they aren’t doomed to inherit the archaic cynicism of their parents, but are free to entertain their own hopes and dreams...
After all, American politics have not produced a candidate like him since 1960 -- yet the comparisons with Camelot should end there; for Barack and the Obama family, there was no compound in Hyannis and no entitlements. His inspirational rise has revived another idea cynics tried to snuff out: that in America, how low you start out has no bearing on how high you can go.
Win or lose come November, Barack Obama reminds us that the American Dream is real -- real enough to believe in, and that it has no room for cynics.
AskMen's Top 10 Most Influential Men of 2008:
1. Barack Obama
2. Steve Jobs
3. Michael Phelps
4. Robert Downey Jr.
5. Stephen Colbert
6. Gordon Ramsay
7. Christian Bale
8. Rob Kay
9. Christiano Ronaldo
10. John McCain
View the full list over at AskMen.com.
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Older Talkback
page: 1
Comical list. Are you sure there isnt a mistake in the posting though? Looks like, to me, it was meant to be on AskBoys.com. Everyone on the list with the exception of, literally, a handful represent much of what little boys find 'influential'.
I'm just happy Rain didn't make the list.
wll at least hes giving something in the wallet mcain and palin have yet to learn this
my god bless you and take of you and your family i pray four you and your family in church this sunday. my cell 1-312-391-4149 i live in chicago ill 60642 can you help me find a job.
page: 1
SP4: read thisOct 21st, 2008 - 17:32:30
Barack Obama, who has consistently downplayed his relationship with William Ayers during his presidential campaign, once gave a glowing endorsement of a book by the former domestic terrorist and was mentioned by name in the book itself.
A blogger unearthed the Dec. 21, 1997, endorsement in the Chicago Tribune and posted photographs of the praise for Ayers' book on Zombietime.com Saturday.
Featured next to a smiling photograph of himself, then-State Senator Obama called Ayers' book, 'A Kind and Just Parent: Children of the Juvenile Court,' a 'searing and timely account of the juvenile court system, and the courageous individuals who rescue hope from despair.'
The book, which details life at the Chicago Juvenile Court prison school, mentions Obama by name on page 82 when it describes Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood:
'Our neighbors include Muhammad Ali, former mayor Eugene Sawyer, poets Gwendolyn Brooks and Elizabeth Alexander, and writer Barack Obama. Minister Louis Farrakhan lives a block from our home and adds, we think, a unique dimension to the idea of 'safe neighborhood watch': the Fruit of Islam, his security force, has an eye on things twenty-four-hours a day.'
The Obama campaign said the blurb was not a full-fledged review of the book.
'He didn't do a review. He provided one line about the book to the Tribune,' campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told FOXNews.com.
A month before the item appeared, on Nov. 20, 1997, Michelle Obama, then dean of student services and director of the University Community Service Center, held a panel at the University of Chicago that featured both Barack Obama and Ayers.
'Ayers will be joined by Sen. Barack Obama, Senior Lecturer in the Law School, who is working to combat legislation that would put more juvenile offenders into the adult system,' the University of Chicago Chronicle reported on Nov. 6, 1997.
Obama has been criticized for refusing to elaborate on the extent of his relationship with Ayers and for claiming to have had no idea Ayers was a co-founder of the Wesather Underground, which claimed responsibility for bombing the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and a New York Supreme Court justice's home in the Sixties.
The Obama campaign has noted that Obama was 8 years old when Ayers and the Weather Underground were active and has no link to their activities. Ayers has said he has 'no regrets' about his participation in the domestic terror group.
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