14 DAY TRIAL // Each year, legendary ABC television personality Barbara Walters releases her very own top 10 most fascinating people of the year list, on which she includes celebrities, politicians and entrepreneurs, on considerations like popularity, reach and achievements.
Until the big reveal of the Most Fascinating Person, ABC airs interviews with some of the other names that make it in the top 10, so we already knew that pop singer Taylor Swift and actress Scarlett Johansson were on that list.
As for the big reveal, it took place the other night, crowning human rights attorney Amal Clooney, nee Alamuddin as the Most Fascinating Person of 2014.
Amal gets title for marrying George Clooney
The name of Amal Alamuddin wasn’t often heard in the celebrity blogosphere until word got out that she might be dating George Clooney, but she was a very successful woman long before that.
Because it was only after she met, started dating and eventually got engaged and married to Clooney that glossies started taking notice of her (they had no reason to do so before), Mrs. Walters considered she deserved to be crowned Most Fascinating – well, for that and for the fact that she conducted herself admirably throughout the media frenzy that followed.
And wore the perfect wedding dress by Oscar de la Renta on her big day.
Indeed, as ABC News confirms, Amal made it to the top of Barbara’s list not because of her achievements but because she “managed to do the seemingly undoable, locking down a man thought to be one of the world’s most determined bachelors.”
She is the Most Fascinating Person of the year that’s about to end because she married an actor. Oh yes, and she does other “unimportant” things on the side, like going to Oxford, and representing clients like Julian Assange, Yulia Tymoshenko, and Kofi Annan for a job.
This manner of presenting Amal’s relationship to Clooney has been criticized and ridiculed from the start, because most media outlets tended to acknowledge her existence only in relation to Clooney, to her beauty second and to her achievements last. The second photo in the gallery explains it best.
The rest of Fascinating people
As for the other people who made it on Walters’ list, they include actors, TV personalities, comedians, activists and entrepreneurs.
They are: openly gay actor Neil Patrick Harris, the “Queen of Television” Oprah Winfrey, former sportsman turned TV co-anchor Michael Strahan, comedienne Chelsea Handler, billionaire, philanthropist and political activist David Koch, actress Scarlett Johansson, entrepreneur, inventor and billionaire Elon Musk, and “Game of Thrones” (“Song of Ice and Fire”) writer George R.R. Martin.
