Time magazine's website on Thursday named me [MRC news analyst Matthew Balan] to their tongue-in-cheek
"Least Influential People of 2010 [1]" list, ranking me
with other notables such as Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, MSNBC
anchor David Shuster, and Clarence Thomas. Contributor Joel Stein stated
that he was "short on morons" to put on his list, so he picked
me [Balan] after CNN anchor Rick Sanchez told him about our recent dispute.
The Time writer got to me after listing three-pages-worth of
notables. I was immediately preceded by actor Joaquin Phoenix,
"political extremist" Lyndon LaRouche, and Justice Thomas. Stein
detailed that "Rick Sanchez told me to put him on because they got in a
fight about whether Sanchez was serious or kidding about being surprised
volcanoes exist in cold places like Iceland. I forgot to ask Rick what
category he thinks Balan should go in, but I was short on morons so I
put him here."
As you might remember, I put up an item on NewsBusters on April 15 [2] about the CNN
anchor's remark about "when you think of a volcano, you think of Hawaii
and long words like that. You don't think of Iceland. You think it's too
cold to have a volcano there." Four days later [3], Sanchez named me to "the very top"
of his "List U Don't Want 2 Be On," and devoted more than four minutes
to how I did a "hot job" on him for his "joke [4]."
By the way, Stein is someone who once fantasized about dancing with former attorney
general Janet Reno [5] back in 2002. He is on the record as saying that
he didn't support American troops in a 2006 L.A. Times column: "When you
volunteer for the U.S. military...you're willingly signing up to be a
fighting tool of American imperialism" (this quote was a runner-up for the MRC's Quote of the Year [6])
Earlier in the online piece [7], before he revealed his
picks, the Time contributor explained that "it was very difficult to
fill up a list of 100 uninfluential people. For help, I called news
anchor Rick Sanchez, who hosts Rick's List on CNN...I figured that when
you're trying to book guests in the afternoon on CNN, you get to talk to
some pretty uninfluential people." Stein continued with a few quotes
from the CNN anchor: "'Don't shy away from easy pickings,' Sanchez
advised. 'When someone says something dumb, Joel, it's your job to
report it.' Sanchez airs a segment called 'The List You Don't Want to Be
On,' from which he gave me some names. 'A lot of times these guys are
famous for 35 seconds,' Sanchez said."
Stein actually made fun of Sanchez, his helper, later in the same
paragraph: "'I'd never heard of the president of Toyota until he was on
the list. I can't even remember his name now' [said Sanchez]. That man's
name, by the way, is Toyoda. When someone says something dumb, it is my
job to report it."
The Time contributor was actually only following in the footsteps of The Daily Show's Jon
Stewart [8], who made fun of the CNN anchor after he infamously asked,
"By the way, nine meters in English is?" during CNN's coverage of the
Chilean earthquake and resulting tsunami back in February 2010. During
that newscast, Sanchez also misidentified the Galapagos Islands as
Hawaii.
-Matthew Balan is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You
can follow him on Twitter here [9].