PERSON OF THE YEAR?

December 30, 2006  

Ever since December 1927 when Time magazine introduced its Man-Of-The-Year issue with Charles Lindbergh on the cover, it has featured an individual or group who, for better or worse, most affected world events during the year.  In 1999 The Man Of The Year became Person Of The Year.  This Year’s Person Of The Year is “You”.  Considering all that happened in 2006 and all that was at stake, was this a copout or is Time on to something?

Time’s editors do not adequately explain in their December-2006 issue why they decided to pass over any number of movers and shakers in 2006.  They preferred to focus on us, users of a World Wide Web that is now “a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter.  It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before.  It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis Myspace.  It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.”

Time has selected groups of people before, but such selections have been rare, and none have been quite as amorphous as “You.”.  Previously, they have featured the American Fighting Man (1950), Hungarian Freedom Fighters (1956), US Scientists (1960), Generation Twenty-Five And Under (1966), Middle Americans (1969), and American Women (1975).  They’ve even selected non-humans.  In 1982 it was the computer.  In 1988 it was the Planet Earth.

Overwhelmingly, however, they have focused on people; and it should come as no surprise that the majority of individuals selected have been Americans.  Between Charles Lindbergh and Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono (2005), every American president since Franklin Roosevelt has been on the cover of this special issue of Time at least once.

American presidents in particular have had an enormous impact, for the better, on world events.  Under their leadership America liberated millions of people from oppression and tyranny during World War II.  It made the world safe for democracy by rebuilding a war-ravished world in its aftermath.  It put men on the moon.  It advanced human and civil rights.  It defeated Soviet Communism and won the Cold War.  And It led world’s scientific, technological, and economic revolutions by implementing policies that provided incentives for entrepreneurs and innovators.

Non-Americans who have appeared on the year-end issue of Time included Adolph Hitler (1938), Winston Churchill (1940), Joseph Stalin (1942), Deng Xiaoping (1978), Ayatollah Khomeini (1979), and Mikhail Gorbachev (1987).  All had a major impact on world events.  Stalin and Hitler rank among the two most evil leaders of all time.  How they missed Mao Tse-tung I don’t know.

Certainly, in 2006 there were ample candidates who rank with the best and the worst on Time’s list.  Nevertheless, Lev Grossman, writing the “You” article in Time, admitted that Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle’s “Great Man” theory of history, which has been the basis for the Man/Person-Of-The-Year concept, “took a serious beating this year.”  According to Carlyle, “the history of the world is but the biography of great men” (and now women, of course). “He believed that it is the few, the powerful, and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species.”

The World Wide Web and how we use it certainly are changing modern society.  Every year more and more people shop from the comfort of their easy chairs on the Internet.  Increasingly we get our news on the Web.  Likewise, the entertainment industry delivers ever more music, television programs, and movies over the Web.  And, as Time correctly points out, communities of people around the world with shared interests have a new revolutionary platform for communicating with each other.  Richard Stengel, Managing Editor of Time, equates them to Thomas Paine, who he calls the first blogger, and Ben Franklin, equating Poor Richard’s Almanac to MySpace.

To be sure, these new phenomena of the World Wide Web are having an impact, but not all of it positive.  In addition to brining people with like interests together, MySpace and YouTube have ruined the future employment opportunities of thousands of young men and women who don’t have the common sense not to post pictures and videos of themselves doing stupid things.  But that’s another article.

No doubt I’ve lived and worked in the Nation’s Capital too long, where following the fortunes of the major political leaders, both foreign and domestic, is the principal spectator sport.  But I’m not convinced that the users of MySpace, YouTube, and Wikipedia soon will have as much impact on world events as presidents, prime ministers, and dictators.  I suspect it still will be some time before the electronic commune overshadows great leaders.  The war on terrorism, attempts to limit nuclear proliferation, eliminating poverty, and fueling the engines of economic growth through good policy still need people with grand ideas and the ability to make them a reality.  And we need good leaders to counter all those “evil” leaders out there.

Perhaps this is no big deal.  After all, Time is just a magazine.  Its principal objective is increased circulation so it can make money from advertising.  If “You” sells magazines, that’s OK.  And I’m sure that Time is on to something.  But it’s all those young people out there who can more readily name people they see in videos on YouTube than they can government leaders I’m worried about.  Maybe they would have been better served by putting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran on the cover, and telling people about him who might not fully appreciate what he represents.

In any event, 2007 should be another big year for important leaders.  Next year, Time most likely will return to its tradition approach for its Person-Of-The-Year issue.  Then again, they may choose clones.