Former Minnesota governor and Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty is the least influential person alive, according to GQ’s ‘25 Least Influential People Alive‘ list.
Pawlenty, who abruptly and perhaps prematurely ended his presidential bid in August, joins the illustrious ranks of Tia and Tamara Mowry, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, and Tila Tequila (who once had a bisexual dating show in which a bunch of men and women competed to be her true love, in case you somehow missed that).
“Every election season produces a number of hilariously pointless candidates who have no chance of winning,” writes GQ in the list in its humor section. “Some of them have value as novelty items. … Then there are folks like Pawlenty, who fail to register even as novelties. T-Paw (as he calls himself) spent much of 2011 as a six-foot-tall paperweight, an aggressively forgettable fellow perfectly suited to the role of debate filler. The $1 million he spent to lose the Iowa straw poll might as well have been burned in front of a group of orphans.”
Pawlenty has since said that he regrets dropping out of the race so early, as the standings of the candidates continue to be in flux.
Of course, Pawlenty’s stated irrelevance looks relatively mild compared to the lashing GQ doles out to Schultz. .
“Do you watch The Ed Show on MSNBC? Of course you don’t. No one does. The only reason people watch The Ed Show is they’re working out in a hotel gym and they can’t find a staff member to change the channel to ESPN,” GQ writes. “Did you know MSNBC suspended Schultz this year? It did! He called Laura Ingraham a ‘right-wing slut,’ and he still couldn’t get noticed.”
Other political notables on the list include Marcus Bachmann, husband of Republican presidential candidate and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, former California Gov. (and the Terminator) Arnold Schwarzenegger, and, rounding out the list at number 24 and 25 respectively, Speaker of the House John Boehner and President Barack Obama.
“Okay, so we’re cheating a bit with this one,” GQ writes on Obama. “He did order the raid that wiped Osama bin Laden off the face of the earth. But then he used that surplus of political capital to let everyone in Washington stick a boot in his ass. This is a man who should be the most transformational figure of the century. Hell, he promised to be that. Instead he wields all the power of a substitute teacher at night school.”