Monday morning magazine roundup

Time is out with its "The Time 100" special double issue of the world's most influential people, with profiles promoted on the cover including Barack Obama's Gabrielle Giffords, Arnold Schwarzenegger's David Cameron, Usher's Justin Bieber and Rush Limbaugh's Michele Bachmann. As these four choices (and writers) suggest, the entire list is pretty questionable, to say the least. Other Time-declared notables pictured on the cover include Benjamin Netanyahu, Cory Booker, Joe Biden, Oprah Winfrey, Paul Ryan, Patti Smith, Colin Firth Michelle Obama and Mark Zuckerberg.

It's "America's Next Billionaires" over at Newsweek, with "those cute little" Olsen Twins on a cover that otherwise asks "Can Kate & Will save Britain?" and "Guess who hates Obama now?" (the answer to the latter question is Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas; the former proclaims that despite the Royal Wedding, England is "royally screwed"). But the mag might have sold more had it expanded its inside "America's Pot-Smoking Capitals" survey and splashed it on the cover; at least editor-in-chief Tina Brown eulogized tragically slain war photojournalists Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington in her upfront essay, and ran a feature on the pair--with stark photos--inside.

The Royal Wedding is cartooned on the cover of The New Yorker, showing the unnerved couple hiding beneath the bedsheets from cameramen and the Royal Elders. Inside coverage concerns Britain's ambivalence to all the hullabaloo, with the main story being the apparent new "Obama doctrine." New York likewise wonders about the president in its "The Loneliness of the American Liberal" cover, featuring the picture of an old Volkswagen bug with an "Obama '08" bumper sticker--and a flat tire. Inside, "Beastie Boys, the early years" revisits the birth of the influential rock-hop trio on the 25th anniversary of its landmark album Licensed To Ill, and "How funny is Brian Williams?" asks a question that maybe should have been rhetorical.

Saturday Night Live's so-called "quiet genius" Lorne Michaels is on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter's "New York issue," and is also lionized as "comedy's most important man…ever" for making stars from Tina Fey to Will Ferrell to Jimmy Fallon. The issue also offers "The NYC Power List" of the heaviest hitters in Hollywood who live in New York, No. 1 being Rupert Murdoch (Michaels comes in at No. 15, Jon Stewart's No. 5) and an oral history of the Tribeca Film Festival, at age 10.

Finally, Billboard's "Latin Issue" highlights Luis Fonsi on the cover, and also offers five tips for getting your tunes on TV, ironically while asking "Big on YouTube: What's it really worth?" But we're most excited to see "6 Questions: Joe Jackson," since it answers when the next album by the great Brit piano pop star comes out: June 7, via Razor & Tie, Live Music.

--jim bessman