Some rituals lose their gloss over the years. As a child my family enacted the placement of Baby Jesus in a Manger, just before we trotted off to Midnight Mass. Initially, there was a lovely little china statue of the reclining Jesus that we placed in—it wasn’t the wood manger, but a cave-like enclosure, courtesy of Eastern Orthodox iconography. By the time I was in my twenties, it was a matter of placing a walnut on a bed of stripped marijuana stalks.
I’m not going to go background on that story, but it illustrates some loss of meaning, some corruption of an annual event. Or, to pun, TIME’s change.
There has always been some confusion over what TIME magazine’s Person of the Year actually represents, and that confusion also speaks to a will toward wishy-washedness of establishment media over the years. Is it a fame thing? Is it who we wish represented our year in a positive sense? It has been framed as the most influential, for better or for worse, or for the person who had the most impact over the news cycle. Hitler made the cover in 1938, we are always reminded, and that was prescient for the deplorable impact that could be made: in the years to come it would encompass far more than the redrawing of the map of Europe. With that in mind, I checked to see who was the Person of the Year for 2001. To my surprise (I confess to not following TIME much), it was Rudy Guiliani and not Osama bin Laden! Although the former’s impact lived on as a successful inve$tor in the security state, I guess we were too squeamish to paste the face of the most influential person who managed to get our flag twisted into a knot. And it was denial, too. Hoisting the Rudy proved the terrorists did not win, though I guess it was prescient regarding our psychological insularity and its manifestation that we still are the center of the world.
Currently, we are being teased with the top selections for 2015. Among them Malala, Elon Musk and Bernie Sanders. Definitely in the category of wishful figures, and as a Sanders supporter I do get the Facebook clamor to vote him in. (I don’t—well, I actually don’t participate in things that will bring up endless time-wasting screens) The Pope, but he already got his cover, and though he gets his nods with some pronouncements from time to time, we, and the entire world are turning a deaf ear on the ones critical of war or capitalism. Kim Kardashian or Caitlin Jenner? Obligatory puuhleezz, but if you are talking about impact on the news cycle, at least one of those is going to show up, no matter what major crisis gets top billing. Sadly, close to the truth.
Donald Trump. As much as one would hate to see it, this chronic publicity hound has hijacked the political news cycle, along with the Republican party, whose impact has been achingly felt since Ronald Reagan. Recall TIME’s rationale for Reagan in 1980:
“He has revived the Republican Party, and has garnered high initial hopes, even from many who opposed him, both because of his personal style and because the U.S. is famished for cheer. On Jan. 20 Reagan and the idea he embodies will both emerge from their respective seclusions with a real opportunity to change the direction and tone of the nation.
Reagan is also TIME’S Man of the Year because he stands at the end of 1980 looking ahead, while the year behind him smolders in pyres. The events of any isolated year can be made to seem exceptionally grim, but one has to peer hard to find elevating moments in 1980.”
Republicans revived
U.S. famished for cheer? Check. The year behind him smoldering in pyres? Check. (You must admit he has messed up the Clinton-Bush match that has been over-determined, but still has the money to play with those two.)
You hate that thought of His Hairness staring out at you? We might have to own it. Yesterday a diary appeared on this site criticizing the lack of coverage of the African-American-led university protests. The author noted the sport of “shooting Republicans in a barrel” that takes up disproportionate print here, and yet with that volley we still get a front-page writer highlighting Sarah Palin again. Are we sick of it, or addicted to it? After a long phase of discussing police brutality and Black Lives Matter, is there an exhaustion, a relapse, a feeling it can be put behind, since it also served the purpose of some who like to argue the bonafides of Clinton vs. Sanders with respect to “minority” voters. And you do realize that Amy Goodman and Democracy now will not grace TIME for steadily covering phenomena routinely ignored/underplayed in all sorts of media. That unicorn won’t ride. And yeah, the site is about electoral politics.
Much like TIME’s POTY will garner our interest and compel keystrokes and clicks similar to our whetted appetites over the best commercial during the Super Bowl, that no doubt will garner maximum security again this year (thanks Rudy of Lasting Impact!). Cuz we can relate to no-fly zones in that airspace.
This is not to say there hasn’t been acknowledgement of some extremely dangerous ideas that are afloat. Ideas that seem to be ”trumping” more reasonable voices. The Nuremberg Laws were written before 1938, before the European maps were re-drawn.
This is also not to say that TIME magazine itself is an all-powerful media tool—the fact that TIME and Newsweek still exist as 15 page magazines owes to the fact that they are attached to much larger media conglomerates.
And who knows who/what TIME will select? They might go full chickenshit and select Twitter instead of one of the worst persons in the contemporary world, who happens to belong to U(.)S(.).