STEPHEN COLBERT

AGE: 43
OCCUPATION: Comedian, host of The Colbert Report
NUMBER OF TIME COVERS: 0
PREVIOUS APPEARANCES ON THE TIME 100: 1

PRO: Hands down the nimblest satirist on TV or in print (I Am America! (And So Can You!)) has spent more than 23 weeks atop the New York Times Best Sellers list), Colbert can take any catastrophe — a rejection from the South Carolina primary, a crippling writer's strike —and spin it into comedy gold.

CON: Colbert's "making" of surprise Iowa winner Mike Huckabee — endorsed by the Report when his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination was at a comically low ebb — raises questions about whether Colbert's meta-ness has turned meddlesome. Is he satirizing American politics...or hacking it? Also: do we care?