Sunday, December 19, 2004

Person of the Year

So George W. Bush is Time Magazine's Person of the Year. I agree. However, let's be clear: Person of the Year is not an honor accorded to the best person, merely a naming of the most important person, news-wise. Time named Bush Person of the Year, not Employee of the Month.

Previous persons of the year have included Josef Stalin (1939 and 1942), Nikita Kruschev (1957), Adolph Hitler (1938), Ayatollah Khomeni (1979), and Kenneth Starr (1998). In nine years, Time did not even narrow it down more to more than a broad group: the American Fighting Man/Our Troops (1950, 2003), Hungarian Freedom Fighter (1956), U.S. Scientists (1960), Twenty-five and Under (1966), The Middle Americans (1969), American Women (1975), The Peacemakers (1993), and The Whistleblowers (2002).

Hey, twice they named inanimate objects: The computer (1982) and Endangered Earth (1988).

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