When I first heard Time had chosen “The Idiot” as its person of the year, I couldn’t help but scratch my head! Actually, I’m joking, but only a little. Time has chosen “the protester” as the person of the year. Which protester? The OWS protester, the whiny Greek protester, and the Arab Spring protester. Laughable.
The Person of the Year Award is supposed to be about people who actually influence the world. I can see picking the Arab Spring protesters because they really have changed the world. They’ve brought down corrupt repressive regimes and could, I suppose, usher the Middle East along toward becoming a responsible part of the world where you don’t have to worry about being executed for sorcery or store clerks molesting your vegetables. COULD is of course the operative word as they could just as well end up ushering in a new set of repressive veggie loving regimes. It will probably be the latter, but who really cares?
But the Greeks? The only reason they’re protesting is because they ran up their credit cards and now the bill’s showed up in the mail and they don’t want to bear the consequences of their own actions. They’re just whiny, overextended debtors. Why in the world would anyone honor them?
And choosing the OWS protesters is ridiculous. What have these dipships achieved? All they’ve done so far is rape each other, murder each other, sell each other drugs, endanger their own children and act out Animal Farm without any costumes. They have brought about 0.0% change in the universe. Not only have their demands not been met, they haven’t even been considered. Nor have they inspired sympathy in the general public. To the contrary, their single achievement has been to provide amusement to conservative bloggers and to annoy the liberal citizens of liberal towns who wasted tax money making sure these idiots didn’t rape anyone beyond their imaginary borders. These turds were so ineffective, even the Democrats won’t go near them anymore.
What would Time Man of the Year alums Adolf Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin (1939, 1942) and the Ayatollah Khomeini (1979) say about these fools joining their elite club?
Even more ironically, there WAS a protest movement that actually did change the world a couple years ago. It was called the Tea Party. But Time didn’t honor them. Apparently Time didn’t think that millions of Americans rising up against a corrupt American government was all that interesting. Instead it honored Ben Bernanke who gave us the Great Recession.
You know, I’m starting to see a pattern here. Clearly, you have to be an idiot to win this award. Apparently, I was right the first time. So in that vein, let’s nominate some people who deserve it:
I nominate Obama for trying to let the morning after abortion pill be sold over the counter to teenage pranksters and creepy boyfriends everywhere. Here honey, drink this.
Alternatively, I nominate Fosdick Corporation, the inventor of the Snuggie.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Time’s Person of the Year: The Idiot!
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59 comments:
Andrew,
What is amazing to me is that more and more it is becoming obvious to anyone who THINKS CLEARLY that journalists are nothing more than pimps for socialism, fascism, communism, and Islam. I wonder what the creators of journalism schools think of that? The whole purpose of it was to regain the trust of the american public. Now, the current crop are losing it. :-)
couple of thoughts on your commentary, Andrew. First, I'm not sure it is an honor to be named man, woman, vegetable, donkey etc. of the year.
Second, like the Nobel Prize, this is a "honor" that is done by liberals. That means, it is taken from their world view as to what is worthy and what isn't.
Third, back in the days of Adolf, TIME Magazine had more journalistic intergrity. Time is no longer about news or journalism, it is about moving forth the jouno-list agenda. "Maybe if we pretend the Occupy Movements are important, people will actually believe it and transfer their anger from Barrack to the greedy bastard capitalists who have gamed the system." Problem is, nobody reads Time anymore unless they are brain dead or an opposition blogger doing research on liberalthink.
Amazingly, this is not TIME Magazines biggest punt on the "Person of the Year." In 2006 they simply named "You" a.k.a. the World Wide Web, which is not even a person. (Yes, they named the Computer "Machine of the Year" in 1982, but as things have turned out, that was apt.) The absolute worst punt came in 1988 when Earth was named planet of the year.
Because this seems to be about self aggrandizement, hypocrisy and idiots and generalities, I nominate "the media" or "hollywood" and I can conveniently ignore any neutral or conservative new outlets, actors, etc in the detailed description of my nomination.
p.s. there was ONE dirty hippie occupying Tucson last weekend. I wondered who he meant with his "we" are the 99%. Was he referring to the mouse in his pocket? Or the lice in his mangy hair? I happened to be in town for the annual street fair when we drove past. Then again, maybe all the other dirty hippies were occupying the street fair. Either way, "the protester" had little impact.
Andrew
I have given your post some considerable thought and with regard to TIME magazine in general I only have this to add.....
I Protest....
I nominate the MSM as a whole - we should all celebrate them as the useful idiots they are...
This appointment is one of those feel-good, mean-nothing things where a bunch of well-off libs get to feel superior to the rubes that "didn't get" OWS while not actually having to be anywhere near the actual unwashed trickles.
Joel, I think that's true. It's pretty obvious to me that "journalism" as we know it is dead in the MSM and it's been replaced with propagandaism. Not only is it stunning how biased journalism is, but also how blatantly wrong they are about their facts and their analysis.
If I were a teacher and I got these "quality" of work from my kids, I'd fail them all.
BTW, we have a debate tonight so everyone should join us here for another T-Rav's Theater!
Jed, All true.
I think at one point it was an honor to be recognized as a mover or shaker even if it was because you're a jerk because Time was important. That's not true any more, but it was once.
I also suspect the idea that Time meant to be negative about people like Hitler is an after-the-fact CYA thing created by Time's PR people to save their reputation. I have never seen the article that accompanied the Hitler selection but the others I have seen have all put a positive spin on these people, even when they've picked Putin or crazy Muslims.
You're right that this is little more than a window into the wishful thinking minds of liberals.
And finally, I think you're right that they are desperate to save the OWS movement because they know the world is laughing at their lack of power in the US. The Tea Party changed the country. The protesters in dozens of other countries changed their countries too. OWS? They crapped the streets, that's about it. That's an embarrassment to the left and it runs the risk the public will see them for what they are -- a tiny fringe of idiots the public doesn't care about.
tryanmax, I saw that as pandering frankly. I saw that as an attempt to pull people in with the idea they would be praised for their personal brilliance/relevance.
But you're right, it's a punt. I also think naming all the presidents at least once (often twice) is a punt. Few of them have really changed the world, most have just stayed the course. And it seems like an easy choice when you don't want to think about who else really changed the world.
I also thought the Facebook guy pick was stupid last year. How exactly has Facebook changed the world? If you want to go that route, then Amazon or Google are much more influential.
Tam, I think that's perfect. There is no greater embodiment of style over substance, self-delusion, and self-aggrandizement than the MSM and Hollywood. They're the perfect choice! :)
Tam, It's the same thing here. We have like 3-4 of these idiots downtown and no ones even sure where they are. No one pays any attention to them, nor does anyone care.
And frankly, even if we did care, what exactly are we supposed to care about? They've never come up with anything they are really protesting. It is pure petulance -- we are protesting because we're generically angry! Grr, hear us whine!
Sorry Indi, you're not on the list of approved "protesters." Time is very particular about which protesters it considers good and you're cause just doesn't rate. :(
rlaWTX, Very true. This is about making snooty liberals feel good and little else.
I knew when Time announced their "Person of the Year" as "The Protester" that it would not include the Tea Party. Well, mainly because as any good Lib can tell you (repeatedly), we do not exist anymore and well, never really existed in the first place.
Bev, True. As far as liberals are concerned, the Tea Party was just a racist mirage that some conservatives got worked up about.
Maybe you all should have left more litter on the Mall? Then they might have notice you.
I nominate Barack Obama. He has brought liberals and conservatives together in the joint belief that Obama must go. :D
DUQ, Nice nomination! Sadly, I don't think that's the kind of consensus liberals were expecting when they gave him the pre-emptive Nobel prize.
Of course HuffPo is all over this. This is a comment on HuffPo and my response.
"There is no teaparty. Those folks all went home right after they learned Medicare was a "government run healthcare program".
Today, it's a corporate owned organization...Koch Bros, Dick Armey, Heritage foundation, Foxy Loxy. Big money hijacked them and, after the corporations were through using the suckers.....sent them home...back to their sofas and Jerry Springer show"
And my response -
“No actually we Tea Partiers realized that staging rallies is fun, but nothing really gets accomplished that way. That's why we work on campaigns to get people elected to local, state, and federal office. And since we helped reclaim the majority of the state legislatures, the House, and almost the Senate in 2010, I think we are accomplishing our goals. That's the only real way to effect change. But feel free to keep disrupting traffic...”
Just a little fun to tweek the HuffPo Libs.
The TIME "Animal/Vegetable/Mineral of the Year" list has as many hits as it does misses. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, got the accolade in 1999. That was a good pick at that time. But Zuckerberg was, if anything, a belated nod to social networking in general, much like the 1991 nod to Ted Turner for a cable news station he created a decade prior. But in Zuckerberg's case, he's only the guy who replaced MySpace.
go, Bev!
Here's a good question--why this year, of all years? Why didn't Time pick "The Protestor" in 2009, when the Iranians were trying to overthrow A-jad and the mullahs? And of course, there was the Tea Party which could also have been covered, with its million-plus march on Washington and so on. Eh, I guess that would have reflected badly on Obama, and of course we can't have that.
Bev, That's an awesome response! That is guaranteed to set their little minds afire with pure hate.
They never have understood what the Tea Party was or that it's goals were legitimate. So their initial comments don't surprise me.
tryanmax, I agree -- they seem to be a couple years behind the time on all of this and they just pick whoever is most famous at the moment rather than the person who is the real driving force.
Also, frankly, Facebook hasn't changed anything unless you count lowering the volume of business for the Post Office and the phone companies. In all seriousness, what has it really accomplished except becoming an ersatz mailbox?
rlaWTX, Call me crazy, but I suspect Bev is quite capable of handling the lot of them at Huffpo! They are outnumbered! LOL!
T-Rav, Don't forget, it began long before that too. Lebannon had their people-powered revolution so did the Ukraine a couple years before. Thailand had one too.
The ones they picked (Greece, OWS, Russia) have all be a gathering of Johnny-come-lately fools who achieved nothing and they are trying to make them seem more important by tying them to the Arab Spring, which is nothing like OWS.
I think the reason they have picked OWS is because OWS is a disaster to the left. It's exposed them as hypocrites and losers, as greedy petulant children, and it's shown they have zero backing from the public.
I think Time and also Hollywood which is considering movies about these people, is trying to save the reputation of the left by making these people seem more important and by pretending they are the equal of the Tea Party.
Bev: +1,000,000 :-)
Andrew, I shook my head when I saw this and I thought what a declaration this was that "Time" is no longer relevant.
Doc, It is a pretty clear declaration of "we're always two years too late and we can't distinguish relevant from irrelevant!" They should re-write their headline! :)
Andrew,
This is my sister in law. Read it if you dare.
Now, we can argue the merits and demerits of near instantaneous communications through the internet. Still, unless your family has a newsletter delivered daily of things that happen to them, or a newsletter that is designed specifically with you in mind, you can not beat Facebook. Not only is it faster, but it is set up to feed you information.
Facebook is the fastest way to organize IMPORTANT information for a single individual. It is the use of Facebook that has changed the world. Google is developing something similar.
I know you feel that it is beneath you. I know you feel that it is plebeian. I know this because you have stated it before.
Still, Facebook has changed how people view and use a computer. You might deplore some of the people who use it, but in reality it is faster than any news outlet and that is saying something in this age of near instantaneous communication.
So Andrew in order to protest Time magazine I must ingratiate myself with Time magazine and get their approval to Protest them.
Do they provide the signs I am to carry then... and hey what about Bus Fare.
you know the Koch Brothers never sent me a check for attending tea Party meetings perhaps Soros will pay better huh!
What is the word for this by the way Astroturf! yea that's the ticket.
Time should just change its name to Broken Clock.
Joel, I have nothing against Facebook itself, I just object to the idea that it's all that relevant to the world. It's just a conglomeration of a couple other internet services, i.e. personal bulletin board, a photo album and twitter.
If it vanished tomorrow, little would change on the net or in the world.
Indi, That's a good question? Does Soros pay better than the Koch brothers who are so cheap they have never paid any of us a penny. We should look into that!
But the answer your main question, yes, you need Time's approval to protest them before they will consider you a legitimate protester. That's how the establishment works.
Lawhawk, I would go with just Broken. Broken Clock implies they're right at least sometimes.
You were right the first time when you said it was the idiot. The Arabs are about to trade a repressive regime for an even more repressive and intrusive regime. The Greeks are making it impossible to save their country. OWS has discredited everything they believe, whatever that may be.
P.S. Joel, I'm not saying Facebook might not be useful for some people, but useful does not really mean important.
Ed, OWS had broadly discredited the left. They have shown that they don't know what they want, when they can come up with ideas they are utopian and nonsensical, they have shown themselves to be criminals and thugs, and they've shown they have no power. Whoops.
On the Arabs, who knows where it will lead, but I suspect some of these countries will end up with much more intrusive governments.
Andrew,
You would never make it in advertising, nor do you understand how markets work.
Facebook is an advertiser's wet dream. The Tea Parties initially organized and still organize with Facebook. Facebook and sites similar to it, like MySpace, are being COPIED and EMULATED by companies that really don't need it to survive. Yahoo and Google spring to mind, along with Apple.
Yes, you CAN set up your computer to retrieve news, but can you set up in one afternoon all your relatives, friends, and certain news outlets with out knowing a lot about computers? With Facebook you can.
Joel, I get that, but I just don't see this as revolutionary or world changing.
It's like the electric can opener -- useful, many people like it, it's good for old people, etc. But if it didn't exist, the same number of cans would get opened. To me, that's not deserving of being called world changing.
Ok so Andrew
If I want to get on Time's approved protestor list what do you suggest.. Based on the average Occupier I am assuming one or more of the following:
1) Stop Bathing
2) Imbibe Mass Quantities of Beer like a Conehead
3) Quit speaking in normal tones and YELL EVERYTHING I SAY IN InCOhEREnT bABBlInG
4) LEARN TO RELIEVE MYSELF IN PUBLIC
5) START f@#$%#$ THROWING OUT g#$ D@#$ MO#$$%f2E$@#$@!! EXPLETIVES IN EVERY F@@#$@# @#$@# @#$@# THING i SAY
Then TIME will approve right!
Indi, LOL! That should do it! I would also add a little anti-Semitism... leftists seem to dig that.
Andrew, I was just pursuing the previous "Persons of the Year" on the TIME website and skimming the articles. (I have a free TIME subscription, so I have all-access. Woot!)
I would agree that the original intent of the title was to be an honor, but I think they named Hitler and Stalin because they were simply too big to be ignored. When then named Churchill, it was like they had been longing for a hero to come along. However, since the Cold War, the articles TIME publishes seem to be laced with awe for the villains they give the title to.
So, even though I think TIME is honest when they say it was meant to be negative for Hitler and Stalin, they now use that excuse as cover to name whatever ideological figure they wish to promote.
Interesting thing: I'm looking at the "Person of the Year" cover gallery, and of all of them, Newt's cover from '95 is the most unflattering by far. That was clearly a reluctant nod. Not that it changes my present dislike for Newt. Put simply, he's not the same guy now as he was then.
I have to say, I'm with Joel on the Facebook thing. Like cellphones, email, blackberries etc changed our ability to instantly communicate, Facebook has fundamentally changed how we exchange information public AND private. Can you imagine 5 years ago announcing a death of a family member in a public forum like Facebook? I now have access to all my old friends that I have not bothered to keep up in 35 years. That is not necessarily a good thing OR a bad thing, but it has changed the way we communicate and interact with people who are not within our circle of real friends. And the very negative aspect is that it gives participants a false sense of intimacy. This has already and irrevocably changed the way our children communicate and interact with each other.
tryanmax, I've never seen the Hitler edition, though I would be curious to read it -- or at least the big article on why they chose him.
I could believe the argument that they only chose Hitler because he was too big to ignore except they chose him in 1938 (before the war, when everyone assumed Britain and France would make short work of Germany) and they chose Stalin twice! Sounds like they approved of them to me.
But like I said, I'd like to see the editions to see for myself what they wrote because I know our MSM has always been big on praising "efficient" dictators and dictator who "get things done" and who "speak for the poor" ... before massacring them.
I had a free Time subscription because of expiring airline points and it was enough to remind me why I never paid for a subscription. Blech. They've really gone downhill.
tryanmax, That's been an MSM specialty for some time now -- the unflattering photo of Republicans. I think the first time I heard it used openly was against Bob Dole. They actually flopped his image left to right to intentionally make him seem strange/disconcerting to anyone looking at the photo.
See Bev, that's why I don't get the Facebook thing -- no friends. Very sad. :(
The problem I have with naming Zuckerberg in 2010 is that it is basically a repeat of naming "You" from 2006. Zuckerberg's year was in 2008, when Facebook was growing at almost 200% per month. Yeah, that was Obama's year, too. But the nature of "Person of the Year" is that if more that one person has a bomb year, some has to come in second.
I wouldn't even have cared if they named Zucky in 2009 (when FB was growing ~6% per month). Honestly, it won't be long before people are asking, "Ben who?" As far as the actual timing goes, it feels like a movie plug.
The other aspect of the timing problem is that it conveniently nudges out other contenders like, oh I don't know, the Tea Party. In '09 the Tea Party was still gearing up to do something. In 2010, it did. 0bama was supposed to usher in a new Democrat era. Oops.
The Hitler article is free to non-subscribers: LINK. To me it reads like a fairly cold assessment of the facts (which may say something, but I won't trouble it).
Thanks for the link! I've always wanted to read that. Fascinating read. It's rather accurate for once and it's definitely not pro-Hitler. Good for them.
More interestingly, they seem to have a great deal of insight which modern liberals lack. For example, they see the coming war as democracy versus authoritarianism:
A generation ago western civilization had apparently outgrown the major evils of barbarism except for war between nations. The Russian Communist Revolution promoted the evil of class war. Hitler topped it by another, race war. Fascism and Communism both resurrected religious war. These multiple forms of barbarism gave shape in 1938 to an issue over which men may again, perhaps soon, shed blood: the issue of civilized liberty v. barbaric authoritarianism.
And they fully grasp that the Nazis are socialists, not capitalists. Check out this...
The "socialist" part of National Socialism might be scoffed at by hard-&-fast Marxists, but the Nazi movement nevertheless had a mass basis. The 1,500 miles of magnificent highways built, schemes for cheap cars and simple workers' benefits, grandiose plans for rebuilding German cities made Germans burst with pride. Germans might eat many substitute foods or wear ersatz clothes but they did eat.
AND then there's THIS:
Most cruel joke of all, however, has been played by Hitler & Co. on those German capitalists and small businessmen who once backed National Socialism as a means of saving Germany's bourgeois economic structure from radicalism. The Nazi credo that the individual belongs to the state also applies to business. Some businesses have been confiscated outright, on others what amounts to a capital tax has been levied. Profits have been strictly controlled. Some idea of the increasing Governmental control and interference in business could be deduced from the fact that 80% of all building and 50% of all industrial orders in Germany originated last year with the Government. Hard-pressed for foodstuffs as well as funds, the Nazi regime has taken over large estates and in many instances collectivized agriculture, a procedure fundamentally similar to Russian Communism.
Modern liberals should be made to read this.
I agree. I had never read it before yesterday. Too much of it is shockingly prescient.
I think the notion that the media was in the bag for communism and socialism way back at the dawn of the 20th c. is a larger myth crafted from smaller facts. There is no denying the existence of the John Reeds and similar such progressives. But just because they turned out to be the leading cusp of what journalism would eventually become does not make them any less the fringe element in their own time.
tryanmax, It is fascinating isn't it? I'd never read it before either and it was not what I expected. They definitely seemed to have a much stronger sense of integrity and regard for the truth when they wrote this. Not only is it a very fair/factual presentation, but their criticisms are stunningly "pro-democracy, pro-capitalism." This was not something I expected and makes me wonder if the media wasn't a good deal more forthright back then than we've been led to believe by the behavior of the current MSM?
I think there is a dual mythos at work.
On one hand, you have the legacy media wanting us to believe they've always been the way they are now. In effect they are saying, "you thought we were unbiased then, so you must think we are unbiased now."
On the other hand, you have the new media trying to paint a picture of old media as corrupt back to its origins rather than having simply lost their way, I suppose to trump up their case as an alternative.
Hey, here is an unexpectedly positive piece on Paul Ryan: LINK Apparently, he made the "Person of the Year" short list. The writer is kind even if he sounds a bit baffled.
That's a good point. They probably want us to believe "this is how it's always been, especially when you used to respect us."
I am half-Arab, and it seems that the article writers and vast majority of those who commented know little to nothing about the reality of the Middle East, Arabs, or Islam. For example, "journalists pimps for Islam", seriously? Is that why you dislike Islam so much? Because your journalists pimp it a lot? And no, you don't need to worry about anyone molesting vegetables or anyone getting executed for sorcery in the Arab world. In fact, if you ever want real sorcery, not the wicca makeup and crap you get in the West, do come to an Arab country and ask around for black-magic practioners who can help you do some dodgy and dark things with their "sorcery". Maybe they'll convince you to "believe".
But seriously, for you to exclude Arab protesters from the bag of idiots, that just shows that the Western media has thoroughly succeeded in fooling everyone in the world. If you think that the Arab Spring was "spontaneous" or some sort coincidental, mass revival and purely a native creation, then you're gullible. The so-called Arab Spring is a Western agenda through and through.
Don't take my word for it; just search for an article with a very similar title: "Time Person of the Year The Useful Idiot", and you'll find more than enough info to understand what's really going on. The idiotic protesters aren't just the Western ones, but also my fellow Arab ones. And we're all being taken for a ride by corrupt politicians and corporations and tycoons like the Rothschild family. Wake up, world.
Rocca, I find your comments interest, especially as you are posting from Egypt. I guess you think the Arab Spring is a Jewish conspiracy? For what purpose?
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