I think you've got to give credit to Time magazine. The Person of the Year concept is basically unsound, is obviously basically unsound, is poorly executed each year, is expected to be poorly executed each year, and nevertheless no matter what kind of silly choice they make it gets buzz and sells magazines. Meaning, at the end of the day, that it's actually a really good idea that's always executed well. Other publications would die for a formula that tried and true.
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It's Me!
17 Dec 2006 10:58 am
Comments (23)
Do I have to get all up in your faces about the essential indexical?
Matt Weiner is first of the new Petey concentration camps arrivals. From there, you'll be able to help with welcoming the multitudinous new arrival that each new train will disgorge. Expect Dave Berri and Jerome Armstrong along in the fist AmTrak.
Time doesn't have a lock on that. If the publishing industry had to do without the "Artificial Controversy" gag they'd starve. Why does Sports Illustrated routinely pick numnuts teams to succeed in their pre-season Top 20 lists? Why are crap movies included in Top 100 lists? Artificial Controversy. It sells.
Can't wait to put being Man of the Year on my resume!
This is about 100 times more retarded than when they picked Earth as "Planet of the Year". No joke, this actually happened.
At least they didn't pick Bush again. Although, in a way, I guess they did.
On the other hand, I was furious last week when Sports Illustrated picked Dwyane Wade as Sportsman of the Year over the obviously more deserving Roger Federer; I can't even manage a little bit of outrage for Time's choice, and I read them both regularly. I'm not sure what this says.
Well, all I can say is that it's about time. Honestly, I think I have had better years: like the year I got my PhD; or the year I first got laid; or the year I bought my house; or the year my son was born; or the year I bought a pound of pot to sell at my college, but smoked it all with my friends before I had a chance to sell a single ounce.
So I assume this is for my body of work.
Can't wait to put being Man of the Year on my resume!
It would be truly awesome if people did this. Surely there's a way to convince at least the tenured academics that stalk the blogosphere to do this. It would be even better if some of those academics were people who could conceivably--for some value of conceivable--have been Person of the Year, even if only in other years.
I will personally pledge never to take a shot at Larry Summers over the gender-flap in any forum, online or IRL, if he lists the honor on his resume. (Not much of an incentive, I admit.)
and sells magazines
Does it actually do that? That is to say, does the PotY issue give Time a bigger bump than a year-end-wrap-up issue gives, say, Newsweek without the PotY gimmick? And was it a basically unsound concept before the general public decided it was an award for *greatest* person of the year?
Anyone else recalling Firesign Theatre's "This is You-TV! For you, the viewer."
Does anyone else see a Chrysler advertisement immediately before the POTY article loads starting out "you may not be time person of the year"--WELL I SHOWED YOU, CHRYSLER--that's what they get for not believing in me.
If you were born between 1941 and 1966, consider yourself a Middle American (or did as of 1969), are a a woman and were alive in 1975, or were a soldier in 1950 or 2003, you have already won.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_the_Year
If you were born between 1941 and 1966, consider yourself a Middle American (or did as of 1969)
Holy sh*t! That makes me a TWO-time "Person of the Year" winner. I should definitely lead off my resume with that!
That's nothing. My mother was born in 1950 and lived in the Midwest all her life. That makes her a four-time Person-of-the-Year winner.
Dear Henry Luce,
Thank you for bestowing me with my third-time Time Man of the Year award. This time, however, I must regretfully decline the honor.
As a longtime blogger, I have nothing against self-expression. I'm for it.
But to take a prize this year for effectiveness?
I'm afraid not.
I blogged on behalf of the Constitution. But that didn't stop my Democratic congressman from voting to shred it along with Habeas Corpus.
I expressed outrage against the mendacity and incompetence of the Bush Administration and the Press. But even though I, like tens of millions of other Americans, voted to out the Republican regime in Congress, neither the President nor the media have seemed to paid any mind.
So I'm returning the prize. You may keep it for yourself; or perhaps you might want to share it with John Yoo and Jose Padilla: The latter the victim of our post-Constitutional America; Yoo the legal architect of the new regime; and you, the press, for enabling it.
I don't know. It seems to me as if Time has been coasting on its laurels for quite some time, the coasting direction has been markedly downward, and now that the bottom has been hit the amount of meaningless directions they can go are finite and not really repeatable (in the sell-magazines sense).
Time used to make thought-ful and -provoking choices. Plenty of predictable and preordained names and faces made the cover, but there were enough POTYs that were both outside the box and, once you thought about it, really made sense, to make folks really curious about what they would do this time. Now I don't hear people talking about this any more, except perhaps for a moment of brief derision after this year's silliness is announced.
It seems to me as if Time has been coasting on its laurels for quite some time, the coasting direction has been markedly downward
Agreed. In my opinion, the only truly inspired choice of this decade was 2002, when the three whistleblowers were chosen to mark the year of great corporate and governmental accountability. I have mixed feelings about last years' choices (the Gateses and Bono), and the rest are terrible. Ahmadinejad, Nancy Pelosi, Kim Jong Il, Donald Rumsfeld, or the Pope all would have been more interesting, daring choices that probably would have stimulated a lot more attention for the magazine than stupid "You".
Henry Luce died almost forty years ago.
According to what I've heard (I haven't been alive long enough to know for sure), the Man (now Person) of the Year has never really recovered from the selection of Khomeini in 1979. Previous generations had accepted Hitler and Stalin as men of the year, but by 1979 people were more sensitive and Time's claim that the position was not an honor fell on deaf ears. Since then, they've generally lacked the courage to name open opponents of the U.S. - Yuri Andropov in 1983 (shared with Reagan) is probably the only person who falls in this category. Some other unpleasant characters have been selected, but Deng Xiaoping (1985), although not a guy I would want as my country's leader, was a reformer in the Chinese context and pro-American, and Time was no more naive about Yasser Arafat (1993; shared with Mandela, DeKlerk, and Rabin as "the Peacemakers) than the Nobel Committee was. So Xiaoping and Arafat don't really break the pattern.
The most obvious failure of the original Man of the Year concept is Giuliani over Bin Laden in 2001. Selecting Bin Laden would have caused ten times (maybe a hundred times) the outrage the Khomeini selection had, but he was undoubtedly the person who had the greatest influence on world events. This year time's editor had freely admitted thst his second choice after you was Ahmadinejad. The failure to pick him shows another failure of nerve.
The problem of the POTY is that it's really "Story of the Year" and the person they choose is just a symbol of that story. When you think about the stories they choose as story of the year, they're usually pretty good. This year it was about how new media was shaking up established institutions. In 05, it was natural disasters and their human toll. In '04, you have the election, in '03, the war, etc. The problem is that it's rare for these stories to boil down to a single person and their influence.
Anyway, I find their annual Time 100 list way more annoying, just for the fact that it's annual, and there's 100. They should merge the two and have an unranked list of 5 to 10. Rip off People and their "Most Intriguing" list.
Actually, if there were any choice that could potentially threaten their stupid end-of-year franchise, this one might be it. It's like the ultimate pander.
They had a poll on TIME's website and the people of the year (us) elected Hugo Chavez with a plurality of 35% as person of the year. The POTY issue of TIME apparently makes no (0 zilch) mention of who the people of the year voted person of the year, however.
Kinda funny.
This is Warhol's "in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes" without the irony.
Comments closed December 31, 2006.
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Heads in the Sand
You seem to be slightly confused. It turns out that Petey actually won the award.
I'm pretty happy to consider Matthew as Vice-Me, after the necessary background checks are complete, of course.
While my plans are still in the embryonic state, I'm planning on enacting a thousand year reich of Petey, All hail before mighty me. (I'm planning a reich of unspeakable horrors.
Posted by Petey | December 17, 2006 11:17 AM