Another year is coming to an end and one thing on the back of everyone’s mind is who will win Time Magazine’s coveted “Person of the Year” cover? Okay, maybe that’s not exactly on everyone’s mind, but it is something the newshounds among us tend to take notice of each year. Whether it be a newly elected President (with the exceptions of Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Gerald Ford, every POTUS has won the spot since 1927) or the American Soldier (awarded in 2003, the year the Iraq war began), the winner always makes us think about why they won and who we would have chosen instead.
Well, after looking over this year’s finalists, I’m kind of left wondering if the “Person of the Year” award is kind of becoming like the Nobel Peace Prize or the B plus…absolutely worthless.
Don’t get me wrong, some of this year’s finalists seem pretty worthy. General Stanley McChrystal, our current Commander of Forces in Afghanistan made the list. Apple CEO Steve Jobs made the cut and I guess he’s had a pretty big year. Jamaican gold medalist Usain Bolt and Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman, are both finalists which led me to believe pickings were pretty slim this year. And maybe that’s why the next three people and/or collection of people made the list.
President Barack Obama is on the list after winning last year’s award. While last year’s cover was understandable, seeing as how he was the newly elected president, there’s absolutely no reason for him to be on this year’s cover, as well. What has he done exactly? Made it through eleven months in office? Picked out a new pet? Even that seemed to take months – don’t get me started on sending troops to Afghanistan. If Obama wins the cover again this year, Time magazine will be dead to me (and trust me, it’s already in a coma, waiting on me to pull the plug).
On the plus side, Richard Nixon is the only other person in history to have been awarded the cover in two consecutive years. If Obama wins, maybe we’ll have his premature resignation to look forward to. Just a thought.
Also on the list is the Chinese worker, which according to Time, has become an influential international economic power. Not the American worker, though I can’t blame Time for that, there aren’t exactly a lot of us left in the country, but come on, do we really need to praise the Chinese? We already owe them like a gazillion trillion billion dollars! Why don’t we just bend over, pull our pants down and invite them to expand their communist empire to include all 3,536,278 square miles of this great nation?
And the final person on the list? You’ll love this one. Speaker of the House and Botox aficionado, Nancy Pelosi. No, seriously. I’m not sure what Pelosi has accomplished aside from calling people Nazis or carrying on about Astroturf, but Time managing editor Richard Stengel made it clear that he thinks the Congresswoman is the bee’s knees on NBC’s “Today” show,
“Look, she’s the first woman Speaker of the House. She’s the strongest Speaker of the House in decades. She had piloted what is probably the most important legislation in decades through the House. She’s a really, really pivotal lawmaker.”
Go ahead, I’ll give you a minute to laugh. Nancy Pelosi. That’s who Time Magazine feels “for better or for worse, …has done the most to influence the events of the year.” I’ll give them the “for worse” part, but somehow I doubt that’s what they’re thinking. Time Magazine is officially worthless and just another example of why the mainstream media is becoming extinct.
