TIME reports on its “Most Influential” poll, Stephen Colbert and Rain
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Straight from the horse’s mouth: here’s what TIME magazine had to say about its poll results.
From TIME (emphasis added, internal links omitted):
Colbert, Rain Not Most Influential
Wednesday, Apr. 30, 2008
By CARYN BROOKSThe second annual TIME 100 poll pitted more than 200 scientists, intellectuals, corporate titans, heads of state, cable TV hosts and Korean pop singers against each other in a competition to determine one thing: who is the world’s most influential person?
Despite aggressive campaigning on Larry King Live, Today and his own show, the voters have spoken — and the winner is not Stephen Colbert. The falsely outraged host will reportedly address this slight on his eponymous pretend cable news program later this evening.
If there’s any consolation for Colbert, it’s that his arch nemesis, peach-cheeked South Korean pop star Rain, didn’t win either.
. . .
Ooh, dare we hope that the reference to Stephen addressing the results on tonight’s show might, just perhaps, be a hint on the great Stephen/Rain meeting? At any rate, thanks to the good folks at TIME, Inc. for putting together this interesting (and occasionally infuriating) contest.
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29 Comments
April 30th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
“Both men will have to settle for a Wii-off.”
A hint of things to come?
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April 30th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
“…aggressive campaigning on Larry King Live, Today and his own show…”
Time writers like to exaggerate don’t they? He mentioned it 2 times I think on TCR, and I don’t think he brought up the topic himself on Larry King and the Today Show…
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April 30th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
The article lies! It says voters could vote as often as they like. That was what miffed me the most, when I couldn’t vote anymore.
I find the differences in their photos totally hilarious.
I hope it’s tonight! “Reportedly” is the key word in that sentence. Who did they get their “report” from?
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April 30th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
They are sooo teasing us with this, but their patience with the online voting fiasco should be noted.
I can’t really understand how they would say Stephen “campaigned” on Larry King’s show…Stephen spent most of the interview explaining his jokes to Larry, not to mention being cut off when trying to Bump donorschoose.org
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April 30th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
“Simmer down, Stew.” — The article was clearly consciously exaggerating the “battle” between Rain and Stephen.
What’s more interesting to me was the battle between Clouds and the Colbert Nation — I’d like to see an article about that.
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April 30th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Yeah, if we really could’ve voted as many times as we’d liked, we would’ve won, hands down.
Er, I mean Stephen would have won. As if I’d have an irrational competitive grudge based on a meaninginless online poll! Ha! Ha ha ha! Haa…. *invisible tennis match*
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April 30th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Gaia Faye,
Bwah! Are you also doing “fly hands”?
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April 30th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
A bit off-topic, but I thought I’d throw this in, since I’m lurking – there are tickets available on the TCR site for Thursday, June 26th, if anyone’s jonesing and available.
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April 30th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
If it was vote as often as you like, we would have TOTALLY lost. We were up against 4chan and seemingly the entire female population of Asia.
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April 30th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
I love that Time is making this a story when he didn’t win.
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April 30th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I’m sorry, this has nothing to do with anything, but I was on the TDS website and happened to glance over at their wondrous “Wayback Randomizer” and there was this heartbreaking picture of Stephen. So, naturally I clicked, wondering what it was, and the resulting emotion was baffling. I have never laughed and felt bad at the same time. Still, no one can contest Stephen’s acting abilities (not that anyone would).
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=124038&title=where-in-the-world-is-stephen
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April 30th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
It MUST be this week… I can’t wait anymore…
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April 30th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
@ Fifi:
True! Miyamoto’s picture isn’t even included in the article, and he’s the winner!
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April 30th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
@ Fifi and Melissa:
Now, see, THAT, I believe, is a true indicator of influence . . .
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April 30th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
first of all I’d like to say ohmygod! I’m typing this on my friends iPod touch (which is amazing! And hard to type on )
Secondly what solar system are you people livinng in? The honour system?
You could vote as many times as you wanted!!!!
all you did was once you voted you scrolled down and clicked Stephens name again and do it again!!!
are you telling me Stephen lost to rain becauSe of the incompetence of his fans!?!!?!?!?
No wonder rain won!
aaasaaagghhghh!!!
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April 30th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
the.truth–
It really only allowed you to vote a certain number of times. Eventually it quit counting your vote. I should know. I tried several times.
Obviously there were other forces already at work, due to the fact that some people got hundreds of thousands of votes within an hour’s time.
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April 30th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
@the.truth
@AmandaIvy
Yes there were forces that unfortunately, were bigger than us. Time should have told us when this would end too. Given more time, we would have won I think.
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April 30th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
I mean Stephen would have won.
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April 30th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
@truthpower & AmandaIvy
REALLY?!?
I didn’t know it stopped counting.
MAybe we then should have moved on to moving rains bar down to 0 and lower his percentage.
But it did seem suspicious that Rain and the other dude had like more than 1 million votes, while Stephen only like what, 800,000.
I bet TIME rigged it so Stephen wouldn’t win just so they could mock him.
@ Truthpower
Stephen IS the American People
(And so can we!)
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April 30th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
@The.truth
haha. what does Time have against Colbert? I thought it was odd that they kept the poll on for nearly a month. I guess the purpose is TIME can now brag that they had several million hits.
ouch.
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April 30th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
@ The.truth–
It’s not so much Time having a personal vendetta, it’s the fact that Asian fans are generally more fanatical than Americans. You think American fangirls are crazy, they had the whereabouts on Rain from the airport, to the TCR studios, when he went in, when he left, etc etc etc.
I honestly wonder if Rain gets any time to himself at all, without girls constantly screaming at him, or bodyguards surrounding him.
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April 30th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
I guess TIME had plenty of time to kill:) In my opinion, there’s plenty of TIME to kill! Thank you.
I’m sure others on this board can do better than this:)
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May 1st, 2008 at 2:17 am
There are rumors about Rain being on the Colbert TV show on May 5
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May 1st, 2008 at 2:49 am
i’m a fan of stephen, and i’m also fan of rain…and i’m american but i’m not asian . so to say that all rain has his “crazy” asian fangirls is a wrong statement.
i’m not taking this poll seriously. i’m just happy it has brought them together.
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May 1st, 2008 at 3:31 am
I wasn’t sure if we were allowed a certain amount of votes, an infinite amount of votes, or only one vote, so just in case, I did the “scroll click refresh repeat” thing AND went on everyone’s computers (even my school’s computers) and voted there.
Plus, I posted numerous bulletins on Myspace urging everyone to vote.
Regardless of who won, Stephen is still The Greatest Living American, and a winner in our eyes.
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May 1st, 2008 at 10:15 am
I hope Stephen win next year. I can’t stand the fact that he lost to a Kpop star two years in a row.
We must make him proud next year.
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May 1st, 2008 at 11:39 am
@ meepo–
I didn’t mean that Rain has only asian fangirls. Just that he’s Korean, so he’s going to have predominantly Asian fangirls. My point was that Asian fangirls tend to be more extreme that the most extreme American fangirls.
@ chr1s–
May 5th?! That’s too long! :(
I want it now!
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May 2nd, 2008 at 4:51 am
Sadness. I voted for Rain like a bazillion times. It just goes to show, there are a lot more nerdy gamers online than obsessive fangirls. Tho if Rain goes on the Colbert show then who effing cares about the stupid poll? It would be epic!
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May 2nd, 2008 at 9:18 am
Wow, Rain has some goofy glasses… are there any lenses in those things?
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