In their lamest pick since “YOU,” Time picks Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as its Man of the Year.
Some will rejoice that it’s not Julian Assange. But the pick suggests the magazine was flailing around, looking for a pick that didn’t represent the broad backlash against President Obama and his administration that was reflected in the Tea Party movement and the big GOP gains in the midterm elections. In the end, the pick, which looks like an ad for Columbia Pictures, seems at least two years out of date and oddly disconnected from larger issues of national and international politics and matters of war and peace.
As many are noting this morning, this continues a trend of odd picks, perhaps driven by a desire for newsstand sales, perhaps driven by political correctness, perhaps by a reluctance to acknowledge picks that are perceived as conservative.
Time’s picks:
2001: Rudy Giuliani
2002: The Whistleblowers (WorldCom, FBI, Enron)
2003: The American Soldier
2004: George W. Bush
2005: The Good Samaritans (Bono, Bill & Melinda Gates)
2006: You
2007: Vladimir Putin
2008: Barack Obama
2009: Ben Bernanke
2010: Mark Zuckerberg
For contrast, here are my suggestions for which figure or figures had the most influence each year:
2001: Osama bin Laden
2002: Dick Cheney (it was in the post-9/11 era his influence was clearest)
2003: Saddam Hussein (from rule to war to capture, his story was the story of the year)
2004: George W. Bush
2005: Danish Cartoonists
2006: Nancy Pelosi (she was the face of the broad backlash against Bush)
2007: Gen. David Petraeus (for masterminding the Iraq surge)
2008: Barack Obama/Ben Bernanke
2009: Barack Obama/Neda, the Slain Iranian Protester
2010: The Tea Partier
I’m sure some will quibble here and there. But looking back, the Whistleblowers look minor in lasting influence; the American Soldier could be nominated any year; Bono and the Gateses are commendable but could be picked any year; Putin is powerful but could be picked any year; Bernanke was a year late; and “You” just looks silly.
What strikes me is that FaceBook is largely a computer ( desktop/laptop ) application. When mobile, it's phones and tablets that handle communication among friends, with apps like twitter, aggregators like tweetdeck or socialite, or other tools other than Facebook.
Me, I would have picked Steve Jobs for bringing mobile computing a leap forward with the iPad. He accomplished what Microsoft and others failed to do.
Tea party is a respectable choice too, better than Zuckerberg.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI always felt that if they didn't want to be seen as glorifying Osama Bin Laden in 2001, they should have picked not a politician but the average citizen who responded to 9/11-- the firefighters, the people who fought back on Flight 93, all the ways in which regular folks rebelled and responded and rendered the era of terrorism short (as opposed to the era of bureaucratic reaction to terrorism, which will be permanent). But if there's anything Time doesn't like, even more than conservatives, it's ordinary people exercising power; You as a chitter-chatterer online may be Person of the Year, but You as a political force must be ignored. So not picking the Tea Partier in the year of the Tea Party was as predictable as, well, Time magazine.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseyou look silly too, Geraghty!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFWIW (admittedly not much), here's mine.
2001: OBL
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse2002: Saddam Hussein (his was the dominant story this year, too, and this was the year the part of the Iranian resistance with ties to him exposed Iran's nuke program)
2003: Howard Dean (the face of opposition to Bush, he rebuilt the Dems' morale)
2004: George W. Bush
2005: Mad Mouthpiece Mahmoud (Ahmedinejad)
2006: Jack Abramoff (the face of the the GOP's fall from grace)
2007: George W. Bush (for launching the Iraq surge)
2008: Barack Obama
2009: Rick Santelli
2010: Scott Brown (Obamacare does not pass as it did, with all the resultant outrage, hijinx, and damage to the Dems, if he doesn't win in the special election)
Why do you guys even care who Time selects for this nonsense?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI actually think Mark Zuckerberg is a pretty good choice. Facebook has changed the way hundreds of millions of people connect with others. My 66-year-old mother is on Facebook all the time now, looking at pictures of her grandkids, commenting on the goings-on of her younger family members, and interacting with friends she hadn't seen in decades.
The thing that sets Zuckerberg apart from most tech icons is that he is willing to make big changes to Facebook to keep it fresh, even if that means temporarily angering his users. (Same goes for Jobs, who would also be a good choice, IMO.) It's why Facebook hasn't already started to become MySpace.
Love him or hate him, Zuckerberg is a visionary whose little college project is influencing the way we communicate, our expectations of privacy, and the way we interact with others all over the world. And the fact that he's not "political" is sort of a breath of fresh air.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"You" was, I recall, a pick to celebrate how the voters slapped around the Republicans in the mid-terms. That was a minor slapping compared to 2010. Time is simply a joke, and will soon sit atop Newsweek on the ash-heap of periodical history.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI remember laughing out loud when I saw the "You" cover in the supermarket.
Not only was it a lame copout of a choice, but the idea for the cover itself (a piece of foil that looks like a mirror, reflecting "your" face -- so YOU are on the cover of Time, getit?) -- was stolen from a 1971 Uriah Heep album cover! (Called "Look At Yourself" also with a foil mirror on the front.)
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