Time's Person of the Year is ... Mark Zuckerburg?

[Vympel]

Wow. I guess it was because The Social Network was supposed to be a good movie (not that I would ever watch it). Never mind that Julian Assange got 20 times the votes, or that Facebook is old hat, or that Wikileaks and the issues raised by it (and its mere existence) is obviously highly important ... nah. Give it to the Facebook billionaire. He clearly had much more effect on the year.

Idiots.

[Dave]

It's about on par with the Nobel Peace Prize. They give it to random famous people, or nobody like in 2006 when they glued a mirror to the front of the magazine and told the reader they were the person of the year.

[Thanas]

The article is however pretty good on Assange... though of course they do not mention the real disclosures of the leaks.

But come on, who expected better from a company that still employs Joe Klein?

[General Zod]

Is there any reason anyone takes this person of the year award seriously anymore after Moot won?

[Thanas]

Also: Apparently Jersey Shore matters more than Angela Merkel.

[Artemas]

Maybe they still feel bad about Hitler?

But anyways, American magazine, so American perspective. I'm a bit surprised that Karzai was a runner-up though.

[weemadando]

I found the most ridiculous one to be Giuliani for 2001 rather than Bin Laden. After all in their own words: "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year."

[Artemas]

Yeah, I remember in (2002? 2003?) watching Times Most Influential People of the Century, and like a third were contemporary US politicians. I doubt anyone has really put a lot of stock into what they've said for decades now. It's complete shit. FDR won three times, Stalin twice (during wartime of course), in 1956 they chose fucking Hungarian patriots for getting their rebellion quashed. They need to choose a hero that Americans can feel good about.

At least the Nobel Peace Prize remained sort of relevant up to a couple of years ago.

EDIT: I will give TIME props though, for choosing the Ayatollah in 1979.

[Stark]

I found the most ridiculous one to be Giuliani for 2001 rather than Bin Laden. After all in their own words: "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year."

If they'd named Bin Laden, their building would have been torched. Seriously, in 2001 the US was waaaaahing like a little bitch, it would have been unthinkable to not choose a BOLD AMERICAN SAVING LIVES.

[weemadando]

I found the most ridiculous one to be Giuliani for 2001 rather than Bin Laden. After all in their own words: "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year."

If they'd named Bin Laden, their building would have been torched. Seriously, in 2001 the US was waaaaahing like a little bitch, it would have been unthinkable to not choose a BOLD AMERICAN SAVING LIVES.

Only 2001?

[Illuminatus Primus]

Who reads Time magazine anyway? People magazine already exists. They should rename "Person of the Year" to "December's Grab Bag of American Politically Correct Cultural Detritus." Kind of long on the other hand.

And what Stark said.

[Guardsman Bass]

It goes back farther than September 11. Time apparently took some serious flack for putting Ayatollah Khomenei on its cover back in 1979, and they've been somewhat wary ever since about getting in that situation again.

[Shroom Man 777]

I found the most ridiculous one to be Giuliani for 2001 rather than Bin Laden. After all in their own words: "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year."

If they'd named Bin Laden, their building would have been torched. Seriously, in 2001 the US was waaaaahing like a little bitch, it would have been unthinkable to not choose a BOLD AMERICAN SAVING LIVES.

Only 2001?

After 2001, the waaaaah-ing turned into something more like a WAAAAAAAAAAGH-ing.



YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAH!!!

But more seriously, if Time ended up recognizing "bad" guys (like Osama bin Laden, Julian Assange, and Robert S. McNamara) for the "bad" things they did, Time would probably end up becoming very unpopular. You're either with us or against us, after all.

It's the same thing with Al-Jazeera. They do real journalism by actually getting scoops out of terrorists themselves, but they made the mistake of airing Al-Quaeda's videos, and now I think if you ask the average dumb American about Al-Jazeera, I bet they'd tell you that it's an affiliate of Al-Queada or some shit, which makes it unpopular with the West*. I hear Al-Jazeera actually does good journalism in the Middle East region, leading to quite a few countries to dislike 'em. One of our local news channels actually affiliates with Al-Jazeera for international news.



*Please correct me if I am wronggo.

[weemadando]

I used to read AJ a lot for just that reason, turns out that journalism is of a higher standard when your journos don't have patronising, racist preconceptions and excellent networks of contacts and sources in the area.

[Artemas]

Hell, even before the Ayatollah like half of the "people of the year" are presidents or US government people. At least ever since World War 2. You've got Carter, Johnson, Kissinger, Ike (twice i think), Kennedy, Nixon, Truman. Christ, the only reason they didn't have more presidents was because they couldn't elect them fast enough.

[Thirdfain]

I don't see the problem here; Julian Assange has accomplished absolutely nothing concrete, while Zuckerburg built a massively powerful and wealthy company in the middle of the worst recession in decades. Assange's "revelations" about how governments do business are far less interesting and have changed the world less concretely than Zuckerburg's partial reformation of the very social fabric of life in the industrial world.

[Alyeska]

I don't see the problem here; Julian Assange has accomplished absolutely nothing concrete, while Zuckerburg built a massively powerful and wealthy company in the middle of the worst recession in decades. Assange's "revelations" about how governments do business are far less interesting and have changed the world less concretely than Zuckerburg's partial reformation of the very social fabric of life in the industrial world.

It has nothing to do with building things. It has to do with having an impact on the world in that year.

[Thirdfain]

It has nothing to do with building things. It has to do with having an impact on the world in that year.

My life has been far more profoundly impacted by the rise of social networking than it has been by Assange revealing that *gasp!* governments are corrupt and conniving. I'll point out that this year the Democrats LOST seats in the house, despite Assange's efforts. It's almost like the American electorate doesn't really care all that much. Meanwhile, the way we go about our day to day lives, keep track of our relationships, and communicate with our peers has been substantially changed. International diplomacy seems to have responded to the release of these cables with a giant shrug, probably because diplomats have been talking that way since the invention of speech.

I'd argue that Zuckerburg has caused substantially more concrete change than Assange has.

[Thanas]

What does the democrats losing seats in the house have to do with Assange?

[General Zod]

I don't see the problem here; Julian Assange has accomplished absolutely nothing concrete, while Zuckerburg built a massively powerful and wealthy company in the middle of the worst recession in decades. Assange's "revelations" about how governments do business are far less interesting and have changed the world less concretely than Zuckerburg's partial reformation of the very social fabric of life in the industrial world.

Assange shouldn't be the one getting the spotlight for simply reprinting the cables anyway, it should be the private who leaked them to begin with. Of course right now he's too busy rotting in a tiny isolated cell with next to no outside contact despite having no trial or charges pressed against him.

[Stark]

Zuckerberg 'built' his company years ago. Why highlight him now?

Thanas, clearly the truth is a propaganda weapon organised by the democratic party.

[Simon_Jester]

What does the democrats losing seats in the house have to do with Assange?

This is a relevant point. Assange himself seems to believe (in that Time article, no less) that Western society (and it's obvious he's talking about the US as one of the big examples) as having reached the point where political change no longer results in change.

I don't think Assange is really interested in Democrats versus Republicans, because to his perspective it's gotten to the point where when you take sides in that you're just rooting for different colors of the same thing. If the empire continues to suffer from corruption, if its agents commit abuses in the provinces while the capital stuffs itself, if the barbarians are grumbling and growing restive on the frontiers, it hardly matters whether the Reds or the Blues win the race in the Circus Maximus.*

One thing the last two years have taught us about American politics is that Democrats are not at all immune to the vices and follies that made the Bush years an era of misrule.

Obama does so many of the same things Bush did, in so many of the same ways and for the same reasons, that the similarities have come to swamp the differences. Congressional Democrats are beholden to nearly the same corporate interests and political imperatives as Congressional Republicans, and when they aren't they would like to be- hence the endless race towards the right as the Democrats try to steal the Republican Party's agenda, rhetoric, and voters out from under it.

Either way, we still get increasing corporatism in the government at home. We saw this when the real policy debate over health care among the governing elite wound up not over whether insurance companies should profit from the health care industry, but how. Democrats wound up fighting for a government-moderated oligopoly where everyone had to buy, but where prices would be kept under some semblance of control; Republicans for a laissez-faire oligopoly where not everyone could afford the product but prices could rise freely.**

Either way, our foreign policy winds up being defined in terms of nebulous "interests" that boil down to economics, in an economy that the average American voter has an ever-decreasing stake in. Our actions wind up falling into the categories of public posturing for the jingoists back home, and quiet backroom deals that serve the interests of the governing elite without giving the average citizen anything tangible except marginally cheaper consumer goods.

On the detail level it makes a real difference: one side may do X things wrong while the other does X+1 things wrong. But X has become so large that from a global perspective, neither party in American politics as currently construed will make a difference.

I think Assange knows this, and is therefore rather indifferent to who gets the fanciest chairs in the White House and the Capitol.
___________

*I apologize to you, Thanas, if this metaphor makes you wince. I hope it won't.

**Which sounds like an absurd question to have a policy debate if the object of the game is to provide health care; it's like arguing over whether your house should or should not be on fire. But it makes so much more sense if we assume that the real question was "how should we structure the health care industry so that the insurance companies get a cut, while preventing anything that would threaten their future prospects of getting to keep taking it?"

[Phantasee]

Zuckerberg 'built' his company years ago. Why highlight him now?

Everybody was using Facebook years ago too, but it's taken this long for old farts to realize it's a pretty powerful social force. I bet there are going to be a bunch of Time subscribers who are going to get Facebook now that it's been showcased in Time like this.

[Stark]

Well, it took a while for Zuckerberg and his company to work out how to profit from the FB explosion, but even that happened years ago. Man's time of the year is ... some guy lolling as the money rolls in?

Actually that's kind of apt.

[Edi]

As a gift subscriber to Time, courtesy of my mom, I've had occasion to read the magazine for the past 20 years. They used to be decent as far as mainstream American media goes, but since 2001 they have become just like everything else in US MSM: A government propaganda piece. For anything US related, their reporting is absolute shit and they will unfailingly parrot the government line even when presented with direct evidence to the contrary.

Their Person of the Year award is just the most odious example of their hypocrisy.

Which reminds me: I'm going to have to tell my mom not to renew the subscription and then cancel the whole shebang. It's just not worth it. On the off-chance that they ever do have anything worthwhile, that can be read on their website.