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Every year Time lists its 100 Most Influential People In The World.
The 2012 list is out today and there are a record three Brazilians on it, entrepreneur Eike Batista, President Dilma Rousseff and Petrobras CEO Maria das Graças Silva Foster.
Everyone can find fault with the list – how is that guy on it and where is so-and-so?!? – but that’s part of its appeal.
Time editors choose who makes the list and there are often heated, last-minute discussions over who makes the final cut and who gets bumped.
But the coolest thing about the list is how famous people write short essays about those chosen.
This year, Barack Obama writes about Warren Buffet, Bill Gates talks on Salman Khan, Mia Hamm lauds Lionel Messi and, ahem, Cristina Kirchner even writes about Dilma Rousseff.
We managed to convince Eduardo Paes to give us his opinions on Eike Batista and the Rio mayor wrote a lovely piece that captures their friendly relationship but most of all, their mutual love for Rio.
The whole list can be found here but here’s Paes’ ode to Eike:
“I have the best job in the world. I wake up every morning energized at the thought of running Rio de Janeiro, the most exciting city on the planet. Our beloved Cidade Maravilhosa(Marvelous City) is going through an extraordinary era of positive change and social development — and as one of its most treasured adopted sons, Eike Batista, 55, has helped us shape the renaissance. He might be Brazil’s richest man and the world’s seventh richest, bringing vital investment to our city from oil and mining, but his most valuable asset is his commitment to Rio’s legacy. In 2009 Eike bolstered our successful bid for the 2016 Olympics, and since then he has partnered with us on municipal projects like the cleanup of the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon. His initiatives, besides helping fund a children’s hospital, include the revitalization of the city’s Marina da Glória, which will be home to the Olympic sailing events, and the establishment of Escola Social de Vôlei, a nonprofit organization that promotes social inclusion in the favelas through sports. Eike and I may not agree on which of us has the best job in the world, but one thing we certainly agree on is that Rio de Janeiro is the best place in the world.”
Socrates, in 1986
A few years ago, Time magazine had me call Socrates to ask him if he would pen a short piece on Kaka.
The magazine’s editors – perhaps the same ones who suggested last month that Lionel Messi was better than Pele – had chosen Kaka as one of the 100 most influential people on the planet and they wanted Socrates to write an eulogy.
Socrates had one question for me. Is this about Kaka the footballer or Kaka the man, he asked. Kaka, the man, I replied.
To my delight, Socrates dismissed the idea out of hand. He had great respect for Kaka with a ball at his feet but not with a bible in his hand.
Time got Casey Keller to write the piece instead.
I thought of this last night when I saw that Neymar had described Ricardo Teixeira as “an excellent president” of the CBF. The young Santos star made the comments on the same day that Edmundo declared that he “loved” Ricardo Teixeira and a few days after Ronaldo and Bebeto both lauded Teixeira’s work.
(See the Neymar comments in Portuguese here, and details of Ronaldo and Bebeto’s nonsense here in my Reuters piece from last week.)
Socrates was not just a brilliant footballer. He was an intelligent and highly principled man who fought hard so that players like Neymar could have more of a voice, both inside and outside the game.
He must be rolling in his grave.
I will never forget the first time a politician shouted at me.
I was in Haiti and the Prime Minister came on the phone to vigorously deny a story peddled by his aides.
Even though I knew I was the victim of a trial balloon that went awry, I was still quite young and being shouted at by the Prime Minister freaked me out.
It felt particularly bad because the man at the other end of the line was the only Haitian politician I ever respected.
I realised I’d better develop a thick skin – and quick!
I recalled that story today after the Mayor of Rio slagged me off in this piece in O Globo. The Rio paper ran an article about my story in Time magazine that criticised the city for the lack of maintenance that helped bring about the building crash that cost 17 lives and the death of a man from an explosion in the city’s drains.
In response Eduardo Pães made the crass comment: “The Americans have been jealous since Chicago didn’t win the right to host the Olympics.”
Sometimes you know when the piece you’re writing will be controversial and prepare yourself for the backlash. But Pães’s reaction took me by surprise because my piece was so innocuous. It simply stated that:
“Two tragic events have underlined Rio’s need not just to invest in new hotels, venues and transportation but also to take drastic action to shore up the city’s crumbling infrastructure.”
Thankfully Cariocas understood and agreed. To my surprise, the comments that came after the story were mostly positive.
The vast majority agreed that the city needs more oversight and more investment in maintaining its infrastructure. And several people criticised Pães for his childish comments.
My thanks to them for understanding.
Sex sells.
My piece on the controversial Gisele Bundchen lingerie campaign is top of the Time’s most read list today.
I’d like to think that’s because of my sparkling writing and astute analysis. But I think it’s probably because it is about Gisele Bundchen in lingerie.
I can only imagine how popular it would be if I included videos of the three ads in my story, featuring the Gaucha goddess pouting away in her bra and panties.
You can find them here.
Here’s the first one for your delectation.
Sometimes it is hard to believe that Brazil really wants to advance.
I’ve written a lot, and repeatedly lauded, the economic progress and the reduction of inequality that marked the Lula years, such as in this Time piece and in this feature for the KPMG magazine.
But then I see reports like this one in today’s Folha and wonder whether Brazil’s development will remain purely financial.
The report is about how drink driving is still an serious issue on federal motorways because loopholes allow establishments, including service stations, to sell alcohol at the side of the road.
The story says that 93 percent of the shops alongside federal highways are in urban (or municipal) areas and so exempt from the federal legislation.
The idea that you can seriously hope to reduce road accidents while allowing establishments to sell alcohol at petrol stations beggars belief.
I wrote about the government’s well-intentioned but somewhat half-hearted attempt to tighten laws on alcohol sales in this Christian Science Monitor piece in 2008.
The Health Minister at the time said that alcohol is a factor in more than half of all accidents on federal highways. Alcohol-related accidents cost the country more than $6 billion dollars a year in lost production, car damage, and health costs, the ministry said.
In my story, I noted:
“Supporters of the ban note that 62 lawmakers, or 1 in 10, had their election campaigns financed by makers of beer, wine, or cachaça (a distilled alcoholic beverage made from sugar cane), according to the Congresso em Foco website.”
The sad and outrageous fact here is when the law was proposed several associations, such as the Brazilian Association of Bars and Restaurants, went to court in order to maintain the right sell alcohol to drivers.
Two big retail store chains, Walmart and Carrefour, won injunctions against the ban. The ban passed but in this watered-down state.
The idea of putting a common good before profit is still rare in Brazil and as companies exercise more and more power and the government fails to support regulatory agencies that shows no signs of changing.
The actions of those two multi-billion dollar firms, as well as of the local associations, would be scandalous if it weren’t so tragic.
They put making money ahead of saving lives.
Today is a special day for Scots all over the world.
January 25 is Burns Night, when we celebrate the life and works of Robert Burns, Scotland’s national bard, who was born on this day in 1759.
The most famous event to commemorate Burns is the Burns supper. It is a traditional meal of cock-a-leekie-soup, haggis, tatties and neeps, and of course, lots of whisky.
Haggis, for those uninitiated in this singularly delicacy, is made from the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep mixed with onion, oats and spices, and cooked in the sheep’s stomach. (It tastes much better than it sounds.)
Today is also the anniversary of the foundation of São Paulo, and a local holiday, so I held my own Burns night at home last night.
Armed with two beautiful haggis (that were, as per the usual specifications, warm, reekin’ and rich), and also with specially imported tins of fragrant orange turnips (which you can’t get in Brazil), a group of friends met and were treated to an introductory course in Burns.
At formal Burns Nights there are a series of traditions, that include speeches, bagpipes and of course the reading of Burns’ famous poem, Address to a Haggis.
I didn’t have any bagpipes so the haggis was instead carried triumphantly into the room to another quintissentially Scottish sound, the music of The Proclaimers.
Then I read the homage to the national dish (that’s me in the photo on the right reading the poem) and explained a little about Burns to my guests, most of whom did not know him.
This is what I wrote about him in this Time magazine piece three years ago about putting on a Burns Night in Brazil:
“The Brazilians in the room knew little about the man and were shocked to know that it was Burns who wrote Auld Lang Syne, the global hymn of friendship and farewell. Still, it’s not hard to identify with a man whose most celebrated traits were his humanity and his romance. Burns was first and foremost a man of the people, and much of his poetry is about life’s cruel injustices. One of his most famous works is To a Mouse, written after seeing a field mouse almost cut down by a farmer’s plough.”
Just as happened three years ago, the Brazilians took to haggis with a gusto and they were both quickly gone.
To my surprise, haggis found a new international audience. And Burns did too.
Having lived and reported in Latin America for 20 years, I’ve done my fair share of disaster reporting. When I worked in Mexico and Haiti it felt like every week I was counting bodies, either from explosions in oil pipes or fireworks factories, or floods, or earthquakes and hurricanes.
I remember boarding an almost empty plane to Cancun to try and get in the way of Hurricane Mitch. When we got there everyone else was thronging the airport to get out – and I was bummed out when the hurricane took a left turn at the last minute and hit Honduras instead.
I once went to the Guatemalan border to cover floods there and couldn’t find a hotel room because the small town was filled with army officers. My memory of that day was speaking with a young lad who walked miles from his home town with a letter asking for help.
And one of my first big stories as a correspondent was just a few weeks after I started at UPI and I spent the night on the office couch doing regular updates to the death toll after an oil duct exploded in Guadalajara.
It would be insensitive to describe them as good times, but they were certainly memorable and they helped me become the reporter I am today.
Although none of what I did was as dramatic as this amazing rescue video shot yesterday near Rio:
I write this because I’ve just spent the last 36 hours writing about the terrible floods in Brazil. I’ve done similar stories it seems almost every year from here and this time the questions I wanted to ask were clear: Why does this keep happening and why do authorities never work on prevention?
The clearest answer was from the Gil Castello Branco, who does great work over at Contas Abertas, an NGO that monitors government spending. He told me:
“When these disasters occur we know what will happen, the politicians will survey the disaster area from a helicopter, then touch down and declare solidarity with the families and then announce a big rescue package so that he looks like the savior. What they should be doing is going there when the sun shines to stand on the edge of a hill and announce that people living there will be removed from the high risk area. But no one wants to do that.”
“It is a historic problem, Brazil always spends money after the fact rather than in prevention,” he added. “We turn that old saying on its head. We aren’t safe, we are sorry.”
There’s more answers here in the Christian Science Monitor and here in Time magazine.
I wrote two stories today recapping and analysing the weekend election results.
One piece appeared in Time magazine, which is basically a short analysis of what we can expect in the second round. And this one in the Christian Science Monitor is a straighter report of the weekend’s winners and losers.
The big surprise of course was the performance of Green Party candidate Marina Silva.
I spoke to a number of people outside a polling station in Brasiliandia, one of Sao Paulo’s gritty North Side neighbourhoods. I was shocked at how many people said they were voting for Marina. Of the dozen or so people I interviewed more than half said they were voting for her.
When you get that sort of response you never know if it is representative of the bigger picture. There could be any number of reasons one polling station or area or city supports a particular candidate and until that point there was no reason to believe the polls that gave Marina around 14 percent of the vote were substantially incorrect. Even though a lot of people said they supported her, it was hard for me to believe that she was really going to make an impact.
It was only when the results came in and she got 19 percent that I realized what I had seen was no fluke.
Marina will be a key player over the next few weeks, and probably over the next few years, too. But I think a lot of people are overestimating her influence in the second round ballot.
Her voters won’t all go to Serra and Dilma only needs 3 percent to secure victory. Dilma should still win quite comfortably, especially given that Lula will be out there shilling for her at every turn.
As analyst Christopher Garman told me about Dilma:
“All she has to do is stick to the message. Brazilian voters are optimistic about the future, they are satisfied with the status quo so her message has to be, You either stay the course of go back to the Cardoso years.”
I went to Dilma’s last rally in São Paulo on Monday night. It rained incessantly but it was still the biggest rally of the campaign, according to the PT.
The rain put a bit of a dampener on things but it was still good to see and hear the biggest names in the PT appealing for votes.
Alongside Dilma, Senate candidates Marta Suplicy and Netinho addressed the crowd, as did gubernatorial candidate Aloizio Mercadante, whose angry speech belied his calm and measured exterior.
I had hoped to get some of that colour into this Time magazine piece but it didn’t really fit. My piece is more of a profile and the challenges Dilma faces.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get an interview with her but I hope that will be resolved soon.
I know I am not alone. Most of my colleagues have tried to sit down with her but she’s avoided the press, for understandable reasons.
After all, she is far ahead in the polls and taking her lead from Lula she is already treating the press as the enemy. The bottom line for her is that she has everything to lose by opening up and very little to gain.
Mac Margolis over at Newsweek wrote a not dissimilar piece on Dilma and her future presidency here. Although I don’t know Mac well, he is, in my opinion, one of the best and certainly one of the most experienced correspondents in Brazil. Anything he writes about Brazil is worth reading (the unfortunate headline to his piece notwithstanding).
I’ve worked for Time magazine for more than a decade and I think this video is genius.
I passed it on to a few colleagues in New York with a little trepidation, wondering whether they’d share my sense of humour. Luckily they did. One editor responde with an enthusiastic: “fekking brilliant!”
One of the ironies is that there really is a Time for Kids, a special supplement for schools that comes out periodically.
I’ve been having trouble getting the video to work, so if it doesn’t run then click on this link.
TIME Announces New Version Of Magazine Aimed At…, posted with vodpod
