Reason's People of the Year

Screw Time magazine. Here's a list to ponder.

December 22, 2006

(Page 3 of 4)

Markos Moulitsas
Creator of the political blog The Daily Kos.

Al Gore. No person has drilled global warming -- one of the key challenges facing our planet in the coming decades -- into the public debate as effectively as Gore did this past year. If we are to avert what appears to be calamitous disaster, it will be because of Gore's work this year.

Craig Newmark
Founder of the transformative web site Craig's List and blogger at craigblog.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. They speak truth to power at significant risk, challenging the entire press to do so.

Neal Pollack
Writer and lead singer for the much-missed Neal Pollack Invasion and author of the forthcoming Alternadad.

Steve Nash. I was going to nominate Osama bin Laden, who must be licking his chops every day when he sees what Iraq has become, but why not choose someone I love instead of someone despicable? Nash, through his pass-first-ask-questions-later-but-also-score-at-will style of play, is as much a philosopher as a basketball player, someone who's continually redefining what it means to be "the man" on the court. In this, what will be his championship season, he's going to become as important to basketball, and therefore to world culture, as Michael Jordan was in his prime.

Louis Rossetto 
Cofounder, Wired magazine, connected to the 'Net in the middle of a rainforest in Costa Rica.

Bloggers. For hastening the demise of increasingly irrelevant (or is that malevolent?) mainstream media, and for promoting an iterative, networked, and profoundly democratic dialogue that is better connecting us to reality--and thus better enabling the species to thrive and evolve.

RU Sirius
Former editor of Mondo 2000, host of The RU Sirius Show, and contributor to 10 Zen Monkeys.

George W. Bush. His administration has done World Historic Damage to American power. This year, some Americans started to get it. LOSER!

Jacob Sullum
Reason senior editor and author, most recently, of Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use.

Sacha Baron Cohen. As Borat Sagdiyev, the clueless Kazakh TV reporter with unerringly bad manners, he managed to be accused of elitism for producing a hit comedy that relies heavily on jokes about drinking, shitting, and fucking your sister.

Jeff A. Taylor
Reason Express writer.

S.R. Sidarth, the "Macaca" guy. Grassroots, distributed media angle, Hindu, and brown - reflecting America's continuing demographic shift -- wants to be a godforsaken greenie lawyer, etc.

Jesse Walker
Reason managing editor and author of Rebels in the Air.