List season’s here.
Time presents the “Top Ten of Everything in 2008.” And by “Everything,” Time means 50 things. Here are 10 of the most media-centric lists:
1) Top 10 News Stories (Number one: “When We Realized The Sky Was Falling,” which was, apparently, September 13, 2008. No Iraq on the list.)
2) Top 10 Underreported Stories (First: “The Pentagon’s latest nuclear snafu.” Huh? Exactly. No Iraq here either.)
3) Top 10 Oddball News Stories” (Which I was going to re-dub “Top 10 Overreported News Stories” except that Justin’s favorite — that Footless In Vancouver story, which Justin argued was underreported– grabs third. One of my favorites — Sasquatch In A Cooler— squeaked in at nine.)
4) Top 10 Magazine Covers (Four of ten are Obama-themed. And Time didn’t vote for itself. Not even once).
5) Top 10 Photos (And the number one photo of all of 2008 is….Cindy McCain Beside Glass of White Wine? Oh, it’s, “As her husband John worked on a speech, Time photographer Christopher Morris grabbed this shot of [Cindy McCain] enjoying a glass of white wine.” Top photo of 2008, if we don’t say so ourselves.)
6) Top 10 Campaign Gaffes (How did LipstickOnAPigGate not make the list? I guess it’d be more at home on some kind of “Top 10 Campaign ‘Gaffes’ Sold To And Bought By The Media” List).
7) Top 10 Open Mic Moments (NutsGate wins! And is, probably, the reason this List made the Lists at all.)
8) Top 10 Editorial Cartoons (Half are election-related).
9) Top 10 Religion Stories (Number one story is that religion wasn’t the story in election 2008.)
10) And, Top 10 Financial Collapses (Lehman wins!)
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.