Time magazine can’t be doing its international readership any good with its recent choices as Person of the Year. Yes, who else but George W. Bush for sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively), for reshaping the rules of politics to fit his ten-gallon-hat leadership style and for persuading a majority of voters that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years, George W. Bush is TIME’s 2004 Person of the Year. Surely they’re being ironic when, in the Time article, the first Bush quote is I’ve had a lot going on, so I haven’t been in a very reflective mood. Bush may be the 2004 choice, as he was in 2000, but who else has Time chosen? In 2003, it was the American Soldier, with the quote They swept across Iraq and conquered it in 21 days…They are the face of America, its might and good will… Yes, well. Other unpopular choices, according to IOL, include Adolf Hitler in 1938, Joseph Stalin in 1939 and 1942, and Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. Interestingly, TIME also chose a blog of the year, the conservative Power Line. I couldn’t find a link on TIME’s site, but they did have a number of articles about blogs, including 10 things they learned about blogs.
UPDATE 12.24pm: I’ve just read the Wikipedia article about the TIME Person of the Year. It’s not supposed to be an honour, which makes more sense now, and I’m sure they’re aware of the irony of the Bush quote! There’s also criticism about the award being too Americentric – the last non-American to win the award was Pope John Paul II in 1994.
I was trying to figure out how they chose him as time’s person of the year. Maybe it had something to do with the “sparing the thanksgiving turkey story” on the IOL site? Amusing none the less.