Time's Person of the Year: who will it be?

[Darren Dirt]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/times-person-of-the-year_b_34025.html

I'm taking part in a panel on Tuesday, hosted by TIME, that will be debating who should be the magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year."

...According to TIME, the Person of the Year is the person who "most affected the news and our lives this year, for good or for ill." With that in mind, here are my other-than-Murtha picks:

North Korea's Kim Jong Il, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezzbolah's Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah (aka The Axis of Evil v. 2.0): For joining the nuclear club without an invitation (Kim). For calling "Nuclear Next!" (Ahmadinejad). For adding "Katyusha" to the list of vocabulary words we'd rather not know (Nasrallah). For making Mel Gibson look like a Zionist in comparison (Ahmadinehjad and Nasrallah). For bringing the world that much closer to apocalypse (all three).

Al Gore: For telling the truth about climate change, no matter how inconvenient. For kneecapping Fitzgerald's ridiculous notion that there are no second acts in American life. For making PowerPoint cool.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert: For providing punchlines with a purpose. For holding our leaders' feet to the fire -- and turning up the gas. For "truthiness," "godless sodomites," "Dead to Me" and "Mess o' Potamia." For proving that great satire can be a weapon of mass illumination.

Dr. A. Q. Khan: For being the Johnny Appleseed of nuclear technology. For making very big bucks selling the promise of very big bangs to very bad people. His radioactive seeds are now sprouting in North Korea and Iran, profoundly destabilizing the world.

Warren Buffet: For becoming the poster child for mega-philanthropy by pledging to donate 85 percent of his $44 billion fortune to charity -- the largest such donation in U.S. history. For showing that his nickname, the "Sage of Omaha," wasn't just about picking hot stocks.

Dick Cheney: For turning the affable, bipartisan, uniter-not-a-divider Governor W of Texas into the fanatical, with-us-or-against-us POTUS 43. For never failing to see the dark side of things -- except when it comes to Iraq. For providing endless fodder for news shows, bloggers, and comics by shooting his friend in the face. For refusing to do the right thing and follow his pal Rummy out the door.

YouTube: For making it possible to see everything we want to see, when we want to see it (what would the year have been like without Lonelygirl15, all those exploding Mentos-and-Coke videos, or being able to watch Jim Nabors sing the Beatles with Leslie Uggams?). For changing the political landscape by making it clear to politicians: do or say something unintentionally revealing and you'll be on YouTube in no time flat. For helping turn George Allen's presidential aspirations and Senate career into a huge pile of Macaca.

The Black Eyed Peas' Fergie: For torturing us with moronic, double-entendre-laden songs that we just couldn't get out of our heads. "My Humps" and "London Bridge" should be against the Geneva Conventions.


- - -

^ the 3 bolded choices are what I would call my own "short list". And although 2 out of 3 of them are positive "persons", isn't it interesting that the third is described in a very Palpatine-like way?

[Shayne]

No one really stands out this year for me.

[Darren Dirt]

Based on the stated "goal" of the Time Magazine honor, who/what would you put on your own personal shortlist? I guess that's the question I'm asking... But if you don't visit the Google News main page, watch The Daily Show/Colbert/Bill Maher that much, then I suppose it wouldn't seem like much of significance has happened over the last year that would make you care... Is that what you're saying? (I hope that came out right...)

[Melbosa]

What about Me?  Can I be Time's Person of the Year?  I mean look at all the great stuff I've done

[Shayne]

Oh I think you got me wrong, i follow world events with an extremely neutral view.

Stewart/Colbert/Maher do a good job of spewing anti-republican anti-GWB banter (i subscribe to RSS that gets me their latest episodes the morning after they air); I'm interested to see how things change when the Democrats win in 2 years and their GWB whipping boy is no longer in power.

Warren Buffet's donation stands out as the single biggest solo act performed this year in my mind.

[Shayne]

Well they gave it to GWB twice 2000, 2004, so heck i guess Melbosa is probably in the running.

[Melbosa]

Well they gave it to GWB twice 2000, 2004, so heck i guess Melbosa is probably in the running.

Thanks

[Shayne]

"the individual or group of individuals who have had the biggest effect on the year's news" as the criteria though would have to make Kim Jong the obvious choice I think, but TIME has really backed away from using controversial people.

[Darren Dirt]

What about Me?  Can I be Time's Person of the Year?  I mean look at all the great stuff I've done

Sure. "most affected the news and our lives this year, for good or for ill" -- it sez "our" lives, but doesn't include the context of the community being described as "our"

[Shayne]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html

"You", interesting.  A nod to things like YouTube, MySpace, Wikipeida where the Internet's users are directing the Information Age.

[Darren Dirt]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html

"You", interesting.  A nod to things like YouTube, MySpace, Wikipeida where the Internet's users are directing the Information Age.

"Cover Story: Person of the Year: You Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world."

Okay, then why can't I correct the "foxnews.com" website when I want?

"
look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.
"

[Lazybones]

Meh, I would rather know more about a person. This whole group of people thing sucks.. Even if the person was less involved than a group, I would rather know about a special individual than a nameless mass.

[Shayne]

Time hasn't picked anyone controversial in a while (unless you count GWB), I agree with you Lazy, I would have liked to have seen it be somebody interesting then get the 5 page article of that person, instead I get a bunch of information about websites and technology that I am already intimately familiar with.

[Lazybones]

Time hasn't picked anyone controversial in a while (unless you count GWB), I agree with you Lazy, I would have liked to have seen it be somebody interesting then get the 5 page article of that person, instead I get a bunch of information about websites and technology that I am already intimately familiar with.

Ya basically they are writing an article about what we, should already know.

[Darren Dirt]

Remember that a lot of "Time" magazine readers are techno-phobes, or at least on the low end of the techsavvometer. To me it's like a redemption of the reduction in "cred" that the I.T. industry received from Y2K (i.e. the success of programmers in preventing major problems = most non-IT folks thinking/saying "what a waste of money, nothing happened, it was all hype!")