Time for a rant!

Today, Time Magazine named “The Protester” as their Person of the Year.

Since 2000, the person of the year has five times not been a person, but an idea: The Whistleblowers (2001), The American Soldier (2003), The Good Samaritans (2005), “You” (2006, let’s not even begin to discuss how useless this choice was), and now the generic protestor in 2011.

Compare this to the 73 years before 2000 (the first recipient, in 1927: Charles Lindbergh). In this time, there were only 10 generic choices (nine if you count the Apollo 8 astronauts as a non-generic choice). So, that is 5/10 in the last decade, and 15/83 in total—a clear trend toward generic choices.

I can’t help but think this is the reason Time keeps getting skinnier and skinnier and less and less relevant. People like boldness. Boldness has meaning. Naming ‘The Protester” as the Person of the Year is the opposite of bold. If you want to honor/signify the importance of the recent democratic uprisings, do so with boldness: name Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor whose self-immolation started the whole thing, as your Person. Don’t cop out and try to satisfy everyone by being boring.

Rant done!