Let’s try a thought experiment. Suppose a conservative woman news anchor… let’s say Megyn Kelly… had proclaimed a somewhat attractive and accomplished woman as one of the most fascinating people of the year because she had married an actor with the correct politics and a room temperature IQ. What do we think the reaction would have been? My guess is thermonuclear. You would have had to bring a pressure washer, degreaser, and squeegee to the set of “The View” just to get Rose O’Donnell off the walls. Barbara Walters did just that. Being the doyen of vapidity she has a vapid television special called 10 Most Fascinating People. In it, I am led to believe, she lists people who are allegedly fascinating. This year’s menagerie included

• Scarlett Johansson (actress)
• Chelsea Handler (comedian)
• Neil Patrick Harris (actor/host)
• David H. Koch (businessman, philanthropist, political figure)
• Oprah Winfrey (former television host)
• Elon Musk (businessman and engineer/inventor)
• Michael Strahan (former NFL player and television host)
• George RR Martin (author)
• Taylor Swift (singer)
• Amal Clooney (wife of actor George Clooney)

The winner was Ms. Amal Clooney. She’s a human rights lawyer but her real claim to fame, the thing that makes her “fascinating” is not her work or her personal story, what gets her to the “stratosphere that we reserve for the Jackie Os, the Princess Di’s, the Kate Middletons” is that she married George Clooney.

 Barbara Walters gave Amal Clooney (née Alamuddin) the No. 1 spot. “How do I introduce her?” the host asked. “I guess the question is, ‘What does it take to fascinate one of the most fascinating men in the world?’ She is known primarily through her spouse, and while we know little about her, we know a great deal about him. And he has fascinated many women—especially me.”

Barbara noted that Amal, 36, is now “in that stratosphere that we reserve for the Jackie Os, Princess Dis and Kate Middletons,” meaning that “everything she does, says or wears is officially fascinating.” The journalist said the Clooneys had “the wedding of the year” and joked that Amal was responsible for one of the “greatest achievements in human history”—locking down Hollywood’s most legendary bachelor.

“Everyone said that no one would get George Clooney to the altar. In fact, George Clooney—who had been married briefly in his 20s—said it himself, to me, in 1995,” Barbara said before showing archival footage. When she interviewed the actor again in 2006, the two laughed over the interview’s resonance.

That’s all it takes, folks, for a woman to be the most fascinating person of the year. Just marry the right man. See how much feminism has changed things.