Time (has not) chosen its Person of the Year: The Protestor

Time has (not) picked its 2011 Person of the Year: “The Protestor.” This marks the 85th time the magazine has published the annual special, beginning in 1927 with famed aviator Charles Lindberg.

Formerly known as “Man of the Year” until it was changed in 1999, Time has always struggled with the relevance and integrity of the distinction. The magazine has from the outset sought to grant the title to the individual who has “for better or for worse …done the most to influence the events of the year.”  From the beginning, though, the award was a bit of a farce. Time’s editors gave the distinction to Lindberg in 1927 specifically because it had been roundly chastised for omitting him from their cover after his famed Trans-Atlantic voyage in May of that year. The award, then, was created to make up for that embarrassment and engender some good will with its readership and the mainstream American public.

Since that time, the award has alternated between global legitimacy and outright pandering. In 1950 it gave it to “The American Fighting-Man,” an empty jingoistic gesture that rang as cynically insincere to anybody with a triple digit IQ. They repeated the sentiment in 2003, this time riding the still cresting wave of post-9/11 patriotism. Except this time, it was “The American Soldier,” both to include both genders of and not sound like the title of a song played on a phonograph.

This year, it once again rode the sentiment of a fickle and easily distracted public and chose “The Protestor,” which encompasses the stateside “Occupy ______” protests, the Arab Spring, and others throughout the world that have made a significant impact on global events and domestic policy for the foreseeable future.

You might be wondering what, exactly, is up my craw with this pick. The problem I have with it is two-fold.

Firstly, Time has once again shirked the effort required to single out a person or person(s) and given it to a diverse and vague group of people whose intentions and values vary wildly. It is almost insulting to one’s intelligence to see a periodical that tries to sell itself as hard news pandering so heavily to its readership and providing a simplified, dumbed-down analysis rather than focus on a specific person who has made an extraordinary impact, either good or bad, on events in the world. That means that sometimes you have to pick someone who isn’t a household name. But that’s hard work and an even harder sell.

The other problem is the vagueness of the award. Though not nearly as broad and borderline moronic as “You” ( content creators on the internet) in 2006, it still simplifies a vast array of movements in order to make an empty gesture towards those who can’t be bothered to learn the specifics. To even lump all aspects of the Arab Spring together as one movement is a misnomer and in a way insulting to those who are part of their respective movements, such as the over five thousand Syrians who are estimated to have been killed in the last several months and thousands more who are being jailed in detention centers for speaking out against an oppressive government. It goes even broader than that, though, and also includes Occupy Wall Street and other similar outbreaks throughout the United States, which while running parallel to some of my own views on money in politics and government has much different aims. OWS is protesting for greater transparency and accountability in politics. The Syrian people are literally fighting for their own lives. It is not my intent to wholly dismiss those who have become involved in the Occupy movement, but in no way should the two be equivocated.

The argument and defense I’ve read is that there was no denying that protests were the story of the year. As already mentioned, I think it does each individual instance a disservice to lump the movements together into one lumpy multi-colored semi-circle of Play-Doh, even if one may have inspired the other to a degree. Also, though, the name of the award is not “Story of the Year.” It’s supposed to be about the newsmakers, not the news.

My pick would have been – batten down the hatches – Barack Obama. It’s certainly a controversial pick and one could argue an easy one to make. But while he still faces heavy opposition from the Right for the ailments of our domestic economy (fallout of events that occurred before he was elected and part of a greater global crisis that analysts are only now realizing also hit Southeast Asia in addition to debt-ravaged Europe), 2011 saw no shortage of foreign policy actions and decisions whose affects will be felt for years to come: new trade agremeents, the successful strikes and operations that killed Anwar al-Awlaki and Osama bin Laden, our hand in toppling Qaddafi without direct troop involvement, and more. In 2008 it was given to him (along with a puzzling Nobel Peace Prize) for winning an election, but 2011 was the year where he made his impact, even if it was drowned out by cries for jobs from the Capitol and shouts of corruption from anarchists and Democrats in the streets of Manhattan.

It is a shame, then, that Time once again took a shortcut. But as mentioned earlier, it isn’t the first time…

PREVIOUS GROUPS & NON-PEOPLE THAT HAVE WON PERSON/MAN OF THE YEAR:2006: You (content creators on the internet)
2005: The Good Samaritan (including Bono, Bill Gates, and Melinda Gates)
2003: The American Soldier
2002: The Whistleblowers (those who blew the whisle on Worldcom, Enron, etc.)
1993: The Peacemakers (Arafat, Rabin, de Kler, and Mandela)
1988: The Endangered Earth (“Planet of the Year”)
1982: The Computer (“Machine of the Year”)
1975: American Women (including but not limited to Betty Ford, Carla Hills, Susan Brownmiller, and Billie Jean King)
1969: The Middle Americans (boy are we still paying for that one)
1966: Baby Boomers (ditto)
1960: American Scientists (a broad array of scientists from a number of different fields)
1956: The Hungarian Freedom Fighter (those who fought against the oppressive Soviet regime in Hungary and were quashed by the USSR)
1950: The American Fighting-Man (which I can’t help but hear being shouted with a Vaudevillian timber)