TIME Magazine Used To Have Balls - "You" are not the "Person of the Year"

Time's 2006 "Person of the Year" -- You

Let's face it - Time's Person of the Year has been neither satisfying nor particularly daring since Newt Gingrich was named Person of the Year in 1995. Since then, Time has been more concerned with picking a politically unobjectionable fluff candidate to fill the once vaunted post and far less interested in the influences of more controversial figures. Even the choice of Newt Gingrich in 1995 seems more of a statistical fluke than a moment of editorial conviction on the part of Time. Newt's part in the 1994 Republican Revolution certainly earned him top billing for the 1995 issue, but the last remotely controversial figure to grace the magazine's annual Person of the Year Issue before Newt was the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.

Fifty years ago, Time's eye for self examination was quite a bit sharper. Starting in 1938 Time picked the following individuals, in succession, for Person of the Year through 1945: Adolph Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin (1939), Winston Churchill (1940), Franklin D Roosevelt (1941), Joseph Stalin (1942), George Marshall (1943), Dwight D. Eisenhower (1944), Harry Truman (1945). These individuals had a profound impact upon the events that surrounded them during these years. Time's recognition of Adolph Hitler in 1938 raises the specter of morality in Time's editorial process and it is an issue that Time has dealt with in the past.

When Time asks its readers for feedback about potential "nominees" for Person of the Year, it generally couches the question is language which allows for someone who has done far more harm than good as in the following example from Time's website:

TIME's Person of the Year is the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill, and embodied what was important about the year. Who do you think fits the bill this year?

Indeed the phrase "for good or for ill" has read "for good or for evil" in previous issues, lending itself naturally to the naming of both Hitler and Stalin as Persons of the Year. Time harbored no illusions as to the nature of Hitler's influence over world affairs. In 1938 he headlined the magazine with the caption, "From the Unholy Organist, a Hymn of Hate." Yet in 2001 Time's consideration of Osama Bin Laden as Person of the Year drew fire from Americans condemning the magazine for even considering recognition of the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks.

Yet certainly those attacks were the defining news story of 2001. Certainly Osama Bin Laden was the figure most responsible for the events that day. Certainly that would make him the single most important figure in the events of 2001. If Adolph Hitler could be named in 1938 for his creation of a racist, fascist, and expansionist regime in Europe certainly Bin Laden's comparatively smaller deed - though perhaps with equally far reaching consequences - qualified for similar recognition in 2001.

So in 2001 Time Magazine chose Rudolph Giuliani as Person of the Year. While Giuliani was an steady voice in New York he did not orchestrate the attacks, he did not marshal US troops to go to war in search of justice, he did not even manage to begin rebuilding the Twin Towers. To this day two pits mark the graves of those once commanding structures.

No one paying attention was shocked by Time's dereliction of journalistic duty, however. Just two years earlier, Time named Albert Einstein "Man of the Century," demonstrating a stunningly poor grasp, not just of history, but of physics as well. Einstein's contributions to physics were profound and his roll as an icon of American science is unquestionable -- but his influence is not nearly what Time assumed it to be. Einstein did not invent the Atomic Bomb, Robert Oppenheimer did, though Einstein's theories were instrumental in its construction. A far more honest approach, unconcerned with the political pussy-footing Time has become so enamored of, might note that Adolph Hitler single-handedly changed the face of Europe, brought about the formation of the United Nations, launched the United Sates and the Soviet Union into a Cold War that would dominate the latter half of the 20^th Century, and changed European History dramatically and irrevocably with his extermination of millions of Jews and other "undesirables."

And so we are left with Albert Einstein, a great man, but a footnote in history alongside giants like Hitler, Stalin, Gorbachev, and perhaps even Oppenheimer.

Today's choice is little better. Time has chosen "You" as the person of the year in 2006. Please. While Social Media is a powerful thing, and the information age will doubtless have profound and lasting impact upon every aspect of human existence for decades - perhaps centuries - to come, "You" are not the individual or group of individuals who most affected the news and our lives over the last year. Sorry.

The entire line of reasoning is a cop-out. Of course the entire population of the world has a profound influence over the day to day lives of the average person; there are, after all, some 6 Billion people out there. That doesn't make those individuals the driving force behind the news though, or even the most influential force in our day to day lives any more than "water" is the main reason the tide goes in and out. News is about elitism, it's about outliers, and it's about the individuals who do extraordinary things; and that is why Time's 2006 person of the year is yet another conciliatory nod to the beige god of political correctness rather than a worthwhile retrospective on the events of a tumultuous year.

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