Person of the year
seemed by The celebration of the nice, or the celebration of success itself (David Petraeus was Mitt's choice), is best left to political ads - Time was marking achievement, albeit of a horrible, tarnished variety.
I would love to ask the Big Faith candidate about , the newly elected leader of the British political party the , who told the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Talk show host could lead the charge and the most Christian Mormon in the world would doubtless follow.
The Ö÷²¥´óÐã has had some trouble with People of the Year in the past (rigged polls and eccentric results) so I am going to stay properly silent - but you?
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My choice would be Roger Federer. A perfect example of success and pure genius and willing to address his fans and the press at anytime. Speaks four languages which helps him communicate to the masses too.
Once in a lifetime, if we are lucky, do we witness pure genius...Roger is the epitome of genius.
But Im sure Putin would use his "muscles" to ensure that it wouldn't happen, and Mitt would claim that Roger has a "phsycal body" and is therefore God!
Nick Clegg may not believe in God himself but he did say he has no issue with people of faith and did go on to point out that his own wife is a Catholic and he even raised his children as Catholics.
Anyway, Nick Clegg's great great-grandfather was an Attorney General in imperial Russia so it would be interesting to see what he makes of Time's "Person of the Year".
I think they should have given this prestigious honour to Al Gore considering all the the work he's done to highlight the effects of climate change and the Live Earth concert thing. And let's not forget the fact that he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Actually, if I was the editor of Time I think I would have given it to Pam Ferris or Noel Edmonds just because I could.
In Northern Ireand, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's Will Crawley runs a person of the year page for his programme. I heard Justin on the show recently talking about tv evangelists. Will C named Richard Dawkins as his programme's person of the year last year. This year, I think the choice should be Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness jointly for making a shared executive work in Northern Ireland.
It's interesting that Romney picks Petraeus for his person of the year. For anyone familiar with Bill O'Reilly on Fox news they will notice how similiar Romney and O'Reilly's opinions tend to be. I fear for America if someone like Romney wins the election next year. He has no core beliefs and changes his positions to suit whatever election he is running in. Why can't the American People see through such obvious phonies and stop inflicting them on the rest of us?
It's ridiculous to say Mitt Romney has "no core beliefs". Do you simply ignore that with which you disagree?
He is an accomplished business man, a family man and religious man. You may not like those qualities, but there they are.
And please refrain from "fearing for America". America will be just fine. Being so fearful, on the other hand, might require some work on your part.
The American people do see through such obvious phonies and do vote against them... unfortunately for President Gore the election was rigged and that guy who struggles with words and numbers got in instead of him.
I don't think people understand what the Person of the Year means. It is not that someone is nice or even a good person. It just means that they have made the most impact on the world for that year. The choice was appropriate.
It is not a "prestigious honour" in the sense of being some prize or accolade. As Time puts it "for better or for worse, so and so has done the most to influence the events of the year." The most impact may be made by someone we do not like, but that does not take away from its significance. Hitler (Man of the Year in 1938) and Stalin (1939, 1942) are prime examples of this.
What if Romney had said the Person of the year should be Jesus Christ, that would have stirred the pot. Or John Smith, that would surely have riled a few people.
I think perhaps Romney should retire and go into publishing. That way he can have his own magazine with his own favorite man of the year every year. Do we really want a man for President who gets upset at what a magazine chooses to publish? I keep thinking about his father George who said about the Johnson administration and the war in Vietnam; "I've been duped." Is it true that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree? I don't think the voters will be duped though.
I saw Ron Paul answering questions from the press on C-Span today. Can anyone in the reality of today's world who excuses Iran for enriching uranium by saying they have a right to and that Mahmoud Amadinejad is just giving them a bad name and we should just all ignore what he says be elected President of the United States? Maybe he could be elected President...of Kooksville.
Get real...Time magazine is a right wing private publication of a media mega-corporation; their coverage and encomiums reflect that. I mean, can anyone seriously imagine Time Warner eulogizing Hugo Chavez or George Galloway or Evo Morales. Time's ad hoc selection of a so-called "Person of the Year' is a promotional gimmick of their own choice which also expresses their political philoshophy, neatly captured in the explanation of the choice. Time chose Putin because, as they put it: "He is not a democrat...He is not a paragon of free speech. He stands above all for stability, stability before freedom, stability before choice... At a significant cost to the principles and ideas that free nations prize ("sic"), he has performed an extraordinary feat of leadrship in imposing stability on a nation that has rarely known it and brought Russia back to the table of world power." I.E., he has squelched socialist aspirations, privatized the economy, begun openeing up the economy to foreign investment and signed up to the West's so-called "war on terror". "Stability" at the cost of popular freedom and democracy is much admired in the boardrooms across corporate America. In fact, it's coming increasingly to resemble the future of this country, too.
I agree with Gavin #6 - who in the dark days of the last 40 years could have ever imagined Northern Ireland under the joint leadership of Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley.
My choice would have been Whoever Was On The TV Set At The Time.
2007 may have been one of the most passive years in history. Whilst the world was descending deeper into international madness, with nuclear development exploding, and then exploding again in a desert, with Putin's behaviour, Pakistani states of emergency, the Burmese protests, Sarkozy, more terrorist attacks, Petraeus jacked up on gung-ho WWI-syndrome... list goes on. And in the meantime, we wondered whether the latest threequel (and further on in the series in some cases) would entertain us, whether Harry would kick the bucket in the last book, whether Diana's concert would be any good, and read in juicy gossip magazines whether any celebrities were affected by the forest fires.
"Time was marking achievemt, albeit of a horrible, tarnished variety. Pardon - how different the world looks from this side of the pond!
Yeltsin, who buried Communism in Russia for good, chooose Putin as his sucessor. Putin has brought stability to most of Russia, the first priority for most Russians. He has also opened up Russia to the rest of Europe, of which it is a part and has started to use the wealth the has come frome oil, gas, timber and other raw materials to the benifit of Russians and Russia. Including rebuilding the infrestructure which has been crumbling for decades.
Look at the achievement of the Americal Federal Government over the last ten years. The poor get poorer and the rich richer. The infrestructure still crumbles away. Overseas, America has acted with an Imperial disregard of others. The result has been to lose pritty well all influence in Latin America. To horrify Americas allies in the Middle East including the Saudies, etc, etc. I wont go into the economic woes of the majority of the American people as this has been discussed at length elsewhere, only to say: "You'ce seen nothing yet". I think you've got the wrong President.
It is scary; it is absolutely scary how these so-called religious and patriotic politicians discuss religion and faith as if those should be the ultimate norm and measure of human value.
The truth is greatest divisions, conflicts and suffering in humankind come from religious divide.
I despise people who don't keep faith to themselves. The way politicians go about religion these days makes me talk against religion everywhere I can.
Mitt Romney, along with Giuliani, really is the worst presidential candidate in the U.S.
Down with the religious right!! (better to say "wrong")
I must agree with Danny that the emphasis placed on religion by (seemingly) all US politicians worries me more than anything. Many of these neo-con religious rightists spend much of their time criticising foreign religious dominated regimes but seem to think it OK as long as it is an American, Christian elite proposing the same level of religious influence over the government of their own country. This all seems rather strange given that the USA was founded on the basis that Church and State should be entrirely seperate!
IanJ
John Kecsmar in comment #1 here has got it right. Roger Federer as man of the year. You'd have to search far and wide to find someone who is a better hero in this day and age. He leads by example and not only as a consumate tennis professional but also with his tireless effort to help those who have less. The charitable good works don't stop with his foundation in South Africa and his work with Unicef, they also include helping out the press with their work by granting interviews in 3 languages after his matches. Who in any profession assumes such responsibility to represent their work the way he does? The truth is that everyone can have bigger dreams today because Mr. Federer has shown us that we are indeed capable of things we never knew possible. Isn't that really how mankind is lifted?
re Romney, he's a complete phony, dangerous and nasty. I'm an unabashed liberal Democrat, but disagree with my liberal friends and like Huckabee (not enough to vote for him tho'). He has some wacky ideas (23% sales tax replacing income tax, with credits for the poor, dangerously regressive; and intelligent design, good grief!) but talks sense about Christianity in a very downright way, helping the unfortunate, loving one's neighbor, not judging others, etc. It's nice to see the gospels used instead of ignored. It is shocking that Christians have killed more in the name of Christ than any other religion (though other monotheists, Muslims and Jews, are working hard to catch up), given the crucifixion was partly to stop killing.
People forget that Time's Person of the Year is who they felt had an impact. For better or worse.
As for Mitt Romney, he has been a successful businessman rescued the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics from their own mess and successfully ran Massachusetts. He will not win the Presidency for a variety of reasons. (Well I have been wrong before but do not see him getting it).
The person who wins the election will be the one best positioned beginning six weeks prior to the election. Let's see who bothers to turn out to vote and take it from there.
The people who object to Vladimir Putin as TIME's Person of the Year are just plain old envious. For the most part, the world's non-hereditary leaders have done a lot less well than Putin with much easier assignments. If pressed to name someone who deserves the POTY award more than Putin, I am only able to come up with 3 names: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second; HRH Prince Philip of Edinburgh (for 60 years as the world's pre-eminent supporter of a woman's right to be No. 1); and Pope Benedict XVI. And yes, the two runners-up chosen by TIME are highly worthy. But let's face it: could anyone but Putin kept Russia on speaking turns with the West, prevented all-out civil war across the world's largest single political unit, and held off on solving problems through nuclear confrontation -- while improving the lives of 150 million people, all suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after 80+ years of a brutal totalitarian police state? Shouldn't we all be thankful for that fact -- all the more so since most of us don't have to live there and face those problems day in, day out? Yes, as does every other country on earth, Russia has legitimate interests, and whatever our feelings about these people might be, it is a fundamental requirement of logic that we take such interests into account, if only so that we don't blunder into yet one more horrible, grisly, costly global conflict. Happy New Year & Peace on Earth in 2008?
Time's Person of the Year has nothing to do with that person being good or noble. It is about what generate the most impact.
Personally, I find their choice of Putin rather odd, but it could have been worse. They could have chosen the Internet again. Talk about a gutless choice ...
Mitt Romney needs to get a life and then live it. The man scares me silly, and I shudder to think he might end up the Republican nominee for President. But then, that, too, makes a terrible kind of sense. The Republicans usually get the most reactionary, religious nut they can find.
I think TIME's Person of the Year can be categorized as a "hopeful choice". Like the Nobel peace price for Reagan and Gorbachev, it's an attempt to quietly nudge Putin to do the right thing and keep Russia moving in the right direction. Putin has obviously been sorely tempted by the twin evils of thuggery and authoritarianism, and at times he's given in to those temptations. Say what you will about post-Soviet Russia, they are still light years closer to enlightened democracy than places like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. I suspect TIME's choice was meant to show Putin that the West recognizes his success and to encourage him to keep doing the right thing in his new post-presidential position.
I'm an American and I agree with President Putin being chosen as Person of the Year. He is not only nice to look at but he has proven to be the smartest World Leader of our time. Now I know no one thought George W. Bush would win. I might not agree with everything Putin says but I do respect him and he has shown Leadership by visiting and talking to World Leaders that are against his policies. Now I would nominate George W. Bush as the WORSE Person of the Year for the pass 7 years and Cheney is right behind him. I hope the US will elect a strong smart qualifed, educated, honest President for 2008.
In #8: "The most impact may be made by someone we do not like, but that does not take away from its significance."
Very well then, how come Osama Bin Ladin wasn't choosen in 2001?
By the way, thinking of even more absurd choices, the Nobel Peace price going to Arafat comes to mind.