Time magazine announced its shortlist for its “Person of the Year” award today.
First, a reminder: the award is not inherently a positive one: it is given to the person who:
for better or for worse... has done the most to influence the events of the year.
So, here are the nominees (in no particular order):
- Donald Tr*mp.
- Vladimir Putin.
- Robert Mueller.
- Separated Families. The 2,000+ families separated at the US border by Tr*mp’s “zero tolerance” policy.
- March for Our Lives Activists. The survivors of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, who started to move the needle on gun control.
- Ryan Coogler, director of Black Panther.
- Christine Blasey Ford, who testified before Congress about her allegations of sexual assault by now-Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh.
- Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist brutally murdered in Turkey by Saudi nationals, almost certainly at the direction of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
- Moon Jae-in, the president of South Korea, for trying to normalize relations with North Korea.
- Meghan Markle, who married Prince Harry.
For what it’s worth, when Time did its open public poll for Person of the Year, the top three vote-getters were not any of the above finalists. In third place where the divers who rescued the Thai soccer team stranded in a cave. Second place went to the planet Earth itself, and the winners were K-Pop band BTS.
Going by Twitter, the “favorite” seems to be Khashoggi, because of what his death says about the world today and the state of journalism. I will say that my personal vote, if I had one, would probably go to the Parkland students, because they weren’t just fighting for change, but actually made change happen.
Who would get your vote?