We’ll have to wait until tomorrow night to discover for sure if the country is continuing down the road to fascism, but the results of one key race have already come in: Slate can now project that People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive for 2018 will be actor Idris Elba. Here’s late-night host Jimmy Fallon calling the race:
People tweeted out the cover, which features Elba in a shawl collar cardigan:
Elba has already begun the honeymoon period most Sexiest Men Alive enjoy with the press in the first days of their administration. Not only did People run a total puff-piece interview with Elba, they also published a photo spread under the headline, “We Found the 30 Sexiest Photos of Our Sexiest Man Alive,” which is both a shameful inversion of the fourth estate’s traditional adversarial relationship with Sexiest Men Alive and a good place to find a picture of a shirtless Idris Elba training to be a boxer, so, kind of a mixed bag. Elba began his reign with a tweet thanking the magazine and encouraging his fans to vote in the midterms:
Elba will replace the incumbent Sexiest Man Alive, country singer Blake Shelton, who rose to power in 2017 despite broad public opposition and his habit of making offensive tweets. Now, after a year of terror, the pendulum has begun to swing back. Will Elba’s election usher in a new era of Sexiest Men Alive who look like America, even when they’re from London? Or will a wave of backlash pave the way for a former reality TV star to harness racial resentment and hatred and ride them all the way to the cover of People’s 2019 Sexiest Man Alive issue? Only time will tell—but this gauche manual retweet from 2015 may hold a clue:
Oh no.
