Who are the world's least influential people?

Time has released its list of the 100 most powerful people — but the magazine's columnist Joel Stein is more intrigued by those at the other end of the scale

Rue McClanahan.
(Image credit: Getty)

In its annual TIME 100 issue, Time Magazine profiles the people who "most affect our world" — with Sarah Palin and Lady Gaga leading the way in 2010. But accompanying the release of this year's list is writer Joel Stein's irreverent ranking of the least influential players on the world stage. Here, a sampling from Stein's catalog of non-notables:

Eric Massa

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Rue McClanahan

Actress

"Betty White has usurped all the power from remaining Golden Girls."

Tom Anderson

Founder of MySpace

"Have you clicked on MySpace lately? It's like you wandered into some section of Las Vegas so seedy it should be in Tampa. You can get venereal diseases just from logging on."

Mayumi Heene

The mother of "Balloon Boy"

"Any wife who can't talk her husband out of that plan really has no influence."

Taipei 101

Until recently, the tallest building in the world

"On January 4, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai made the Taipei 101 irrelevant. You think little boys read the Guinness Book of World Records and ask their dads: 'One day, do you think I can go to the top of the second-tallest building in the world?'"

Read the full article at Time.