reading with the stars
Elon Musk loves Kanye West, and other strange profile combinations from the Time 100
Time's annual list of the 100 most influential people is meant to honor everyone from world leaders to iconic pop stars. But for us peons, this self-congratulatory exercise in publishing the words of 100 famous and semi-famous guest writers is always the most interesting not for the content of those entries, but for the strange combinations of celebrity authors and acclaimed subjects.
For every logical pairing, like having Amy Poehler sing the praises of her Parks and Recreation co-star Chris Pratt, there's an odd couple, like Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia giving an endorsement of his ideological SCOTUS opposite, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
But these strange pairings are oddly fascinating. After all, how else would we have learned that Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, truly admires the unfettered ambition of Kanye West, or discovered that Ewan McGregor was just as obsessed with the Serial podcast as the rest of us were last fall?
Martha Stewart, meanwhile, had only praise for Kim Kardashian — though she did give her the slightly backhanded compliment of calling her "beautiful in an exotic, totally exaggerated way."
But the elusive Tilda Swinton may have given the most sincere endorsement of all to comedian Amy Schumer, whom she called "an honesty bomb" who's "in your corner." It's perhaps the sweetest, most unlikely pairing. And best of all, it actually rings true.