New York Magazine has posted its 200 most influential New Yorkers (I'm assuming its purely the fact that I've temporarily moved to London that prevented them from including me...)
Assuming you don't have the time to read through all 200, here (in no particular order) are MYCM's Top 15 Influential New Yorkers of Note:
1.
*****Jon Stewart, Ben Karlin, and Stephen Colbert*****The Pew survey said it all: Twenty-one percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 turn to The Daily Show as their only source of news (the networks got 23 percent)—and that was before Stewart’s Oscar-hosting gig, The Colbert Report, and Colbert’s own ultra-Establishment gig emceeing the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The Daily Show’s political sensibility—smart, pragmatic, fed up with the Dems but horrified by the GOP—is extremely appealing to New Yorkers (we flatter ourselves by seeing it as our own). Stewart has become the comedian-as-Cronkite; to some, his team are the only people on TV worthy of trust.
2. *****Rupert Murdoch*****
It’s Rupert’s World
You’re just watching, reading, listening, surfing, and singing karaoke in it.
You get up early and switch on Fox News for Your World With Neil Cavuto and catch the end of an O’Reilly Factor repeat; he’s hawking “The Spin Stops Here” golf balls. Flip to Good Day New York, then grab the Post for the subway—check out that “Page Six” item on The Simple Life. At work, update your MySpace page, search for a better job at SimplyHired.com, then pop to the newsstand for the Times of London, the Sun (National Rugby League scores—sweet!), and the Weekly Standard (to see what Tony Snow’s White House pals are thinking). Your FoxSports.com Fantasy Football draft is coming up—study the prospects at Scout.com. Then chat with the cute sales rep from HarperCollins about How I Met Your Mother (using flirting tips from AskMen.com; so much better than The Game). Say, maybe she wants to catch a film: How about The Sentinel? Meh—RottenTomatoes.com says it’s a poor man’s 24. So you head home alone—you need to catch up on The Shield anyway. Too bad your DirectTV’s been acting up—it didn’t record M*A*S*H or Boston Legal. Your buddies in England and India never have problems with BSkyB Or Star. You could always rent a flick: Napoleon Dynamite or Alien? Though you should finish Freakonomics, and Mom’s been pushing The Purpose-Driven Life. But you can’t put down Nicole Richie’s The Truth About Diamonds! Finish it, then surf IGN.com for dirt on next summer’s Halo movie. Whoa, there’s a Website that lets you do karaoke online! Then check the TV Guide Channel: Hey, a Buffy rerun on Channel 9! Wait: Isn’t tonight a new episode of American Idol? D’oh!
3. *****Anna Wintour*****
Editor-in-chief, Vogue
Vogue, c’est moi. No fashion figure has ever played her power as strongly and cannily as the feared, respected, sharply intelligent Wintour. She can make a fledgling’s career in a single phone call (designers from John Galliano to Zac Posen owe her a debt of gratitude), anoint the next society muse (Lauren duPont, Jessica Joffe), and raise millions for her favorite causes ($26 million for the Met’s Costume Institute in the past eleven years, $14 million for various AIDS charities). And let’s not forget her burgeoning empire (Teen Vogue, Men’s Vogue, Vogue Living). Even paint-wielding peta activists and a whiny roman à clef can’t touch her. In fact, she’s been an inadvertent boon to the publishing industry, since The Devil Wears Prada spawned its own subgenre of chick lit.
4. *****Marc Jacobs*****
Head designer, Marc Jacobs International
Quietly, modestly, totally, Marc Jacobs has taken over. You see him everywhere, from the army jackets (even if yours is from H&M, it is, in a sense, by Marc) to the ubiquitous slouchy leather bags to the transformation of that once-sleepy stretch of Bleecker Street. In his other gig, as creative director of Louis Vuitton, he’s single-handedly made that brand the most profitable of parent company LVMH’s fashion stable. You may not immediately swoon for what he shows on the runway (ballooning volumes and bulky layering for fall, for example), but by the time the season changes, you will.
5. *****Clive Davis*****
Chairman and CEO, BMG U.S. Label Group
In an age when traditional A&R has been all but superseded by the Internet, Davis continues to pull off an improbable one-two punch as nurturer of talent old and new. On the one hand, he plucks teenage R&B crooner Mario from American Idol; on the other, he helps Barry Manilow to his first No. 1 album in almost 30 years. Next: a plump-up for Pearl Jam, which Davis coaxed over to J Records after twelve long years at Epic.
6. *****John Moore*****
Booker, Bowery Ballroom
Local buzz-band We Are Scientists were recently asked for the “personal highlight” of their career. The answer? Selling out that “cornerstone of the New York scene”—the Bowery Ballroom. It’s owned by Michael Swier and Michael Winsch, but the impeccable taste of booker Moore makes the venue the final stamp of approval on any indie-rock passport.
7..*****Eliot Spitzer*****
Attorney general, New York State
Using the unlikeliest of bully pulpits, Spitzer brought reformist zeal back into politics. He transformed the attorney general’s office from a bureaucratic backwater into a kind of governor-in-waiting post, a nationally watched shadow Securities and Exchange Commission that defends investors across the country from Wall Street greed, using litigation—or, more often, the threat of it—to radically transform relations between government and the worlds of finance, insurance, and health care, among others. His hard-charging style set the tone for a new breed of law-enforcement Democrats emerging across the country. Showing he can use the carrot as well, he’s spent the past half-dozen years rebuilding the state Democratic Party, all but ensuring him a landslide victory and a significant mandate to reform Albany when—okay, if—he’s elected governor in November. The Thomas Dewey of the 21st century.
8. *****Chuck Schumer*****
U.S. senator, New York State
Senator Noodge. Schumer’s relentless poking and prodding—along with his pragmatic plotting—have taken the Democrats to the brink of taking back the Senate. As head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Schumer has on speed-dial every one of New York’s wealthiest Democratic donors. What’s more, Schumer has veto power over key political and staffing decisions made by every Senate candidate in the country, each of whom craves his attention, strategic advice, and campaign cash.
9. *****Bill Clinton*****
Foundation president
No one comes close as a Democratic fund-raising attraction. He’s shining attention on the African aids catastrophe and wrangling desperately needed money to fight the disease. A generation of younger politicians tries to imitate his gift for empathy, and his political consultants peddle their wares around the world on the basis of their success with Bill. He’s taught a 40-year seminar in triangulation to his wife
and political partner . . .
10. *****Hillary Clinton*****
U.S. senator, New York State
Does the sun have much influence on the planets? Nothing happens in the 2008 Democratic presidential race that isn’t related to Hillary. The White House is almost equally fixated with New York’s junior senator, and she remains the GOP’s best fund-raising foil. The press doesn’t much care, but Hillary is a major force in her day job as well, from keeping military bases open upstate to doggedly chasing federal money for the victims of 9/11’s toxic air.
11. *****John Sexton*****
President, New York University
Sexton is an educational impresario, and he’s made NYU the most exciting three-ring university in the country. When Sexton was named president of NYU in 2002, the school rated maybe a B on the national college-excellence curve. Today, it’s considered an A-plus, beating out its hometown rival, Columbia, and all the other Ivies for the past two years as the country’s top “dream school,” according to a Princeton Review survey of high-school seniors. The Brooklyn-born Sexton, who was the dean of NYU’s Law School before becoming president of the university, engineered the transformation by investing $350 million in the arts and sciences, launching a seven-year, $2.5 billion funding drive, and wooing teaching talent away from the Ivies. In the process, he’s brought a renewed intellectual luster to the city. He’s also attracted higher-caliber students—students who figure to go on to reshape New York and the world.
12. *****Randi Weingarten*****
President, United Federation of Teachers
The leader of 140,000 active and retired teachers, Weingarten has the power to stop education reform in its tracks, or at least slow it to a virtual halt. The Brooklyn-born former high-school history teacher and Cardozo-trained lawyer has used her position to oppose everything from schools chancellor Joel Klein’s focus on standardized testing (in contrast to “true learning”) to his proposed principal-accountability plan. She’s railed against private-school tax credits and the Department of Ed’s increased funding for charter schools at the expense of traditional schools. That said, Weingarten isn’t beyond compromise. She agreed to a longer school day and more tutoring—key planks in the Klein reform platform—in exchange for better pay for her teachers. As head of both the UFT and the Municipal Labor Commission, a union coalition with more than 365,000 members, Weingarten has influence that reaches beyond the schools: She can swing close to a half-million votes.
13. *****Spike Lee*****
Director
You can’t watch a political New York film, a Brooklyn film, a Harlem film, or a September 11 film without thinking that Spike Lee got there first (if only he could have so great an impact on his beloved Knicks). More important, Lee serves as artistic director of the talent factory that is the NYU Film School, making him not only an inspiration to current directors but also a mentor to future ones. This year, he reemerged as a filmmaker with Inside Man—boosting his once-flagging Hollywood clout. And he’s currently prepping a Hurricane Katrina documentary.
14. *****James Schamus*****
President, Focus Features; film professor, Columbia University
Has reinvented the suit. No studio head is more trusted by directors than Schamus, and no wonder: His sensitive and subtle handling not only got Brokeback Mountain made but also took it all the way to the Oscars. A rare executive with heavy-duty artistic credibility, this Berkeley English Ph.D. made his name co-writing scripts with Ang Lee. Now, with the recently promoted producer David Linde, Schamus has built Focus into a director-friendly, defiantly cosmopolitan mini-major that has fostered directors from Sofia Coppola and Michel Gondry to Fernando Meirelles and Todd Haynes.
15. *****Jane Rosenthal*****
Co-founder, Tribeca Productions and Tribeca Film Festival
Rosenthal’s partnership with Robert De Niro, Tribeca Productions, has spawned some so-so comedies (Meet the Fockers and Analyze That), a few small gems (Stage Beauty, About a Boy), and one festival that may change New York’s film scene forever. The Tribeca Film Festival started out as a way to boost downtown’s spirits and economy after 9/11, but Rosenthal’s smart commercial partnerships (American Express) have brought glitzy megaplex films to a young fest that might otherwise have fizzled. Tribeca gets better—and more important—every year, both as a destination for film lovers and as a breeding ground for homegrown filmmakers.
Plenty more to be found on the New York Magazine website. Know who holds the power and influence in one of the greatest cities on earth.
To go along with the theme here, I've included my favorite song about New York City. While I'm not a huge fan of Billy Joel, this song truly captures my love of the place. Got any others I should know about? Leave it in the comments section.
Download:
New York State of Mind - Billy Joel
Buy:
The Essential Billy Joel (Amazon)
