A month ago, I semi-anonymously posted a political cartoon in the form of a tournament bracket entitled "GOP Madness" to the blog I Love Charts. This week's Time Magazine cover uses the same concept, with some intriguing parallels to my chart.
Now, I don't know if anyone at Time saw my bracket prior to making their version, but they definitely could have--while it would be an exaggeration to say that my post went viral, it did get some attention: it was reposted to Buzzfeed and a number of other blogs, became the top Google search result for "GOP Bracket" (and the #4 result for "GOP Madness," which takes some doing, as there is certainly plenty of that these days), and found its way onto at least a few hundred Facebook pages.
I also realize I wasn't the first to come up with such an idea, and Time may have made theirs independently. But a few things lead me to suspect that they didn't:
* Romney, Huntsman, and Pawlenty are in the same position on both charts
* Insider vs. Outsider dynamic (the Time bracket emphasized this more than I did, but mine did have two insider "regions" and two outsider "regions")
* More generally, the concept of labeling the "regions" by candidates' common features
If they did use my idea, I'm flattered, but some credit would be nice! And maybe some freelance work, or something...
So, what do you think?