The 25 finalists for Time magazine’s Person of the Year 2008 include John McCain, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, Michael Phelps, T. Boone Pickens, Henry Paulson, Gordon Brown, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hu Jintao and Tina Fey (in photo). But does anybody really think the editors can choose anybody but President-elect Barack Obama? In the setup to its online poll, the only “cons” the magazine lists for Obama are: “He neither cured cancer nor won the World Series. Also, could be funnier.”
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50 Comments
Like a blazing meteor, Sarah Palin captivated the world. Who else could it be?
Time Magazine Award -
No pulse, ethical behavior or identification with the human species required…
Short of someone curing cancer it would be difficult to find someone to surpass Obama. That is not based on being a cheer leader for Obama as much as simple impact upon the country. First Black President, rallied people of all colors, generated a passion in politics among common people and not seen since JFK. He brought to the forefront the similarities and differences between the races and allow for a more open discussion of the topic. Whether real or imagined he generated hope in a better future for this country simple by being there.
I will add he is doomed to fail in some respects as too much has been placed on his shoulders. He is nether the anti-Christ nor Christ himself. But he is until then the person of the year.
I agree, dog. He’s a remarkable man. But I don’t think he’s “doomed to fail”….he will do his best and that is the most anyone can do. Just the fact he is willing to take on such an overwhenlming challenge says a lot about him, and he’ll do fine.
Like a blazing meteor, Sarah Palin captivated the world. Who else could it be?
BlueJay sings…
If she is playing him for a fool, he’s the last one to know.
Loving eyes will never see.
Blazing meteor? Captivated the world?
Dude? Have you SEEN that hic PROUDLY speaking in front of turkeys being brutally slaughtered?
Sarah Palin for CLOWN of the year.
PERSON of the year is Tina Fey. For helping to protect us from the Wasilla hillbilly in hilarious fashion.
After further consideration…
Tina Fey saves us from Sarah Palin.
But THAT is not necessary if Sarah Palin never gets plucked from Alaska.
Sarah Palin NEVER stands on the national stage if not for Senator Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton is person of the year.
“Like a blazing meteor, Sarah Palin captivated the world. Who else could it be?”
Are you serious?
Barack Obama is hands down the Person of the Year by the criteria that Time Magazine usually tries to operate under. His face dominated the covers of the magazine like no other. The response to his election was worldwide. No one else comes close in terms of significance.
I suppose it will be obama, but damn. I think Tina Fey had as much influence in him winning as any other individual.
Tina Fey!
What has he done other than make a bunch of promises he cannot possibly keep to get elected? He is already backing off on some of them.
Let’s wait to annoit him to see if he actually does something other than run a successful campaign before we bestow accolades, awards, and sainthood on him, shall we?
Mary he will fail maybe not in everything as he will do his best but as you pointed out his task is greater than a mere moral can overcome. The best he could do is a balancing act in offsetting his failures with this country’s wins. In the end that is what will be counted and even then some will only notices where the failures were. In a way his plans are not change other then to stop what has been a failure and go back to something that did work. He does not have to be a genius to do that just use common sense.
But there are many whom are placing hope on his shoulders that have all but lost hope.
We are in times when we are looking for a hero, someone to lift this nation out of the possibility of a repeat of the Depression. No one persons can do it all, he would be fighting a system that from the beginning thoughts does not recognize that it is a failure to continue as is. Free trade as it was implemented has damn this nation. But there are so many whom in spite of the results still swear by it as the solution.
We are having major businesses that have reach their credit limits through bad business practices and the solution that is being sold is to up their credit limits. Forgive me for what I am going to say, but the only way Obama can hope to stop this is to be a Real Republican about it. A Real conservative if you will, it is beginning to sound that is the direction he will be moving. But sadly he will not accomplish that in even eight years. The republicans even though it is in the best interest of the country will be doing ever thing they can to stop him. There will be certain segments of the Democratic party will also fight to stop him as he will be too conservative. A lot of people have stopped using common sense and even thinking for so long that they can not start doing either. The only thing they have been doing is substituting hatred and attacking for solutions and common interest to govern their thoughts. That they do not know how to stop and just think about the outcome.
Obama if he is only half sincere and honest, intelligent and having the best interests of this country in mind.
Will be set up to fail at that, some would rather have the country die than help save it. And yes they come in both parties,
“Like a blazing meteor, Sarah Palin captivated the world. Who else could it be?”
Burn, baby, burn.
And, please, oh, Creator/God/Allah/Goddess/whatever, don’t choose her and feed that already overblown ego.
Pre…you forgot one…The Flying Spaghetti Monster (Ramen)
I vote for Tina Fey, she demonstrated how incompetent palin is.
“Raptor” –
Time’s “Person of the Year” isn’t sainthood.
Take a pill.
It’s too early in the morning to bust a blood vessel on this one.
Sarah’s set to cash in on the repub idiots, good for her.
but..mh…other than win an election with a lot of campaign promises, what exactly has he DONE? Does Time select every winning president as person of the year?
Does Time select every winning president as person of the year?
=========
No, but Obama is only 1/2 white devil so he is a shoe in!
“Raptor” fills the forum with his brilliance –
“but..mh…other than win an election with a lot of campaign promises, what exactly has he DONE? Does Time select every winning president as person of the year?”
Gee, I’m sure that’s something you could look up for yourself and report back.
I’d guess the answer is yes, pretty much.
Getting elected President of the United States tends to be a pretty newsworthy achievement.
Remember, “Raptor,” there were years when Hitler and Stalin were what was then called “Time’s Man of the Year.” Even Luce didn’t think they were humanity’s BFF; it was an acknowledgment they generated a lot of newsprint and their actions affected the world.
Yeah, I’d say Tina Fey helped Obama win, by emphasizing the idiosyncrasies of Sarah Palin. But it’s not like she had to do much anyway, Sarah Palin basically wrote the script for her.
Pre…you forgot one…The Flying Spaghetti Monster (Ramen)
Oops! Mea culpa…
OK, mh…basic research shows that 19 election years since the beginning of Time’s (formerly Man of the year, now Person of the year) have resulted in 8 times (42%) the winner of the presidential election was Time’s man/person of the year.
What will be telling is if he is so recognized after being in office actually doing something.
Being the first African American elected to the office of the U.S. presidency is not really that noteworthy, is it? Nah, the bum is just good at campaigning and that’s it.
My goodness, some of you people crack me up.
We’re caught up in Obamamania. If someone had cured cancer, won the worls series, cured the economy and walked on Mars all in the same week the American media wouldn’t have noticed because they are so fixated on Obama.
Being the first African American elected…..
=================
Yeah, It’s not about race…
Uh huh………
Listen to the cons squeal this morning.
Eeeeeee!!!!
What a beautiful sound.
Dennis
The only fixated people on Obama seems to be the Republicans. I have to wonder if it is because Obama is really as bad as these Republicans try to tell the rest of us or is it because deep down they know Obama is right?
I don’t expect miracles from an Obama presidency but I do think he will give Americans back something we have not had in a long, long 8 years – and that is self-respect and global respect.
I would love to know what the true feelings of the world leaders is about George W. Bush? I don’t want to hear the politcally correct version of their feelings – I would be interested in their true feelings. I found it disturbing at the recent economic meeting, not many global leaders even reached out to shake Bush’s hand – they seem to treat him like the bastard child at the family reunion.
LOL oh MOM hav’n you heard? When Putin was being called by the President of France on Russia’s military actions. Putin went on to exclaim about his right to use force to impose the will of Russia. The President of France replied “Yes that sound like something President Bush would do!”. Putin fell silent for a moment then said “Oh I see your point!”.
On January 1st, 2008, who would have predicted that Obama would have even won the Iowa caucuses, let alone beome the nation’s first African-American president?
Love him, hate him, or whatever, in many respects, it turned out to be the year of Obama. All kinds of conventional wisdom got thrown in the trash, including some pretty significant presumptions about what Americans wanted government to do.
The running joke that is Sarah Palin broke no new ground, unless you think Alaska jokes are important.
I think the only other person who could come close to representing the year would be Henry Paulson (unfortunately) but the full-on meltdown didn’t happen until September.
No contest.
I see Larry Summers on TV next to Obama. He’s been making a surprising amount of sense lately, but I still find that unsettling.
It has to be Obama. I didn’t vote for him, nor Did I vote for McCain. But given the amount of press he has received, given the amount of excitement and energy his campaign and election has created, It has to be President Elect Obama.
mh continues with his ad hominem attacks:
Raptor” fills the forum with his brilliance –
obviously, having an opinion is not acceptable around here, is it? Freedom of speech doesn’t exist if you disagree with certain people, does it?
Like a blazing meteor, Sarah Palin captivated the world… Sorry folks, I’ve got to say it.
You mean a blazing sh_tball!!
bviously, having an opinion is not acceptable around here, is it? Freedom of speech doesn’t exist if you disagree with certain people, does it?
Raptor, I suggest you read your first post before you go off on someone else’s perceived rudeness.
And don’t worry: His Most Excellent Grand Commissar of WEBlog will not take away your posting privileges. :) The only threat I’ve seen to your free speech on this forum is inconvenient placement of a foot.
My first post was posed as a question with a thought to wait until the president elect actually does something before bestowing countless honors upon him.
Nowhere did I make a personal, insulting attack towards anyone–unlike many posters here, that is not my normal action. So many people cannot discuss opposing views without throwing in personal attacks it is unbelievable.
A quick look at wikipedia finds that every US president except Coolidge, hoover and ford have been person of the year. and many more than once.
and, my research demonstrated that mh was decidedly wrong in the assumption of being elected “pretty much” garners the Time award. Since it began, that has happened less than half (42%) of the time. I asked a question, and then backed it up with facts. MH’s response? typical personal attack/insult.
tom…i am not disputing that. They were not automatically named by Time after their first election.
42% of the time hardly qualifies as a rarity.
How about choosing Bush for:
Largest national debt ever
‘Best’ financial meltdown in nearly 80 years
Most disasterour foreign policy in history
Hey, “Raptor” –
What about
“‘Raptor’ fills the forum with his brilliance”?
What’s ad-hom about it?
I’d be flattered if some of the CONs in this forum would come to their senses and sometimes recognize how I always (nearly always, anyway) get things right and they’re totally clueless.
That’s ad-hominem?
Uhm… “Raptor?”
There’s only a presidential election every four years. The guy who gets/got Time’s Man/Person of the Year who just got elected President only has a chance at the recognition once every four years.
I dunno, but here’s a guess:
FDR in 1932. Maybe again in ‘40 or ‘44 (but there’d probably be a good case those years might have gone to Churchill or Hitler.
I hope Charlie Chaplin was the Man of the year in 1928. Too bad he was a Brit. He would have made a much better president than Hoover.
But I digress.
After 1948, I gotta bet Harry Truman got the recognition that year.
And Eisenhower four years later.
I don’t remember 1956 history all that well, but maybe it was Jonas Salk or Milton Berle.
Betcha it was JFK in ‘60.
Kinda gotta suspect it was LBJ in ‘64.
And Nixon in ‘68.
It gives me the willies to think it might have been possible (and I haven’t looked up anything to substantiate this post with facts…this is just me thinkin’ about stuff and typing)… but could it have been Henry Kissinger in 1972?!
Oh god. That was the year disco killed rock and roll and ties got fat.
There’s only one rational explanation for that: Abbie Hoffan was successful injecting LSD into the nation’s water supply and we didn’t know what we were doing! Like buying a Chevrolet Vega?!
‘76, Jimmy Carter. Slam dunk for Man of the Year.
Ronald Reagan in ‘80? Same thing.
1984. I bet it wasn’t Reagan again. If the Time Person of the Year meant anything the choice would have been Steve Jobs. Betcha it wasn’t/
1992. Bill Clinton had just unseated an incumbent president who’d enjoyed 90% public approval on June 1, 1991. Another slam dunk for POY.
1996. Of course it should’ve been Monica Lewinsky. I betcha it was someone foreign who doesn’t matter to anybody for anything anymore.
2000. You gotta remember the Person of the Year issue probably went to press before Bush v. Gore was decided by the SCOTUS.
If they chose the Supreme Court or one of those other group-awards that signal a cop-out at Time editorial board meeting, it probably would have made sense.
I’m going for either a foreigner politician who doesn’t matter anymore or J.K. Rowling in 2000.
2004. The closer it gets the less I remember. I wouldn’t be surprised it it were Shrub. Or Rove. Or Jimmy Kimmel. In the grand scheme of things they’re all about equal by the gravitas measure.
As I said, “Raptor,” I think the guy who just got elected President of the United States has an inside track to being Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
Like that amounts to much.
You came on her comparing the POY as some kind of secular sainthood.
That’s what started all of this.
Obama is the story of the year because he’s the story of the year. Having a funny name is part of it. Being mixed-race is part of it. Being young and someone who puts dijon mustard into tuna salad is part of it.
That billions of people around the world think maybe America has come to its senses and rejected the politics and governing style of George WMD Bush is part of the story.
C’mon, now. That a 46-year-old was given a basketball in front of a lot of 20-something battle-hardened soldiers and let fly a 3-point jump shot — nothing but net! — is part of it.
Is some of it important? Most definitely. Is a lot of it frivolous? Please.
During one of those one-page essays by someone on the Time editorial board who voted against that year’s POY, someone wrote something like “Is this a laural or a starting gun?”
I still haven’t looked it up, but I betcha there’ve been a couple or so back-to-back POYs. FDR is the best bet on points but Luce hated Roosevelt.
Nixon ‘72 & ‘73 occurs to me as the most likely, for two different reasons.
I’m gonna hold off looking up the real record.
I’m sure reality will always disappoint me.
That happens a lot.
Bush will take first place in history as the worst president ever. In that category he’s second to none.
He inherited an economy and country in which all he had to do, was be a watchman and not screw anything up, and instead he immediately began to tinker.
A list of earlier picks,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Person_of_the_Year
From Time..notice the years of elections, every 4 years beginning with 1928, President’s have been selected 8 times. Eisenhower was selected in 1944, but that obviously was not as president. Kennedy was named in 1961–but that was not for the year he was elected (1960).
1927 Charles Augustus Lindbergh
1928 Walter P. Chrysler
1929 Owen D. Young
1930 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
1931 Pierre Laval
1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1933 Hugh Samuel Johnson
1934 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1935 Haile Selassie
1936 Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson
1937 Generalissimo & Mme Chiang Kai-Shek
1938 Adolf Hitler
1939 Joseph Stalin
1940 Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
1941 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1942 Joseph Stalin
1943 George Catlett Marshall
1944 Dwight David Eisenhower
1945 Harry Truman
1946 James F. Byrnes
1947 George Catlett Marshall
1948 Harry Truman
1949 Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
1950 American Fighting-Man
1951 Mohammed Mossadegh
1952 Elizabeth II
1953 Konrad Adenauer
1954 John Foster Dulles
1955 Harlow Herbert Curtice
1956 Hungarian Freedom Fighter
1957 Nikita Krushchev
1958 Charles De Gaulle
1959 Dwight David Eisenhower
1960 U.S. Scientists
1961 John Fitzgerald Kennedy
1962 Pope John XXIII
1963 Martin Luther King Jr.
1964 Lyndon B. Johnson
1965 General William Childs Westmoreland
1966 Twenty-Five and Under
1967 Lyndon B. Johnson
1968 Astronauts Anders, Borman and Lovell
1969 The Middle Americans
1970 Willy Brandt
1971 Richard Milhous Nixon
1972 Nixon and Kissinger
1973 John J. Sirica
1974 King Faisal
1975 American Women
1976 Jimmy Carter
1977 Anwar Sadat
1978 Teng Hsiao-P’ing
1979 Ayatullah Khomeini
1980 Ronald Reagan
1981 Lech Walesa
1982 The Computer
1983 Ronald Reagan & Yuri Andropov
1984 Peter Ueberroth
1985 Deng Xiaoping
1986 Corazon Aquino
1987 Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
1988 Endangered Earth
1989 Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
1990 The Two George Bushes
1991 Ted Turner
1992 Bill Clinton
1993 The Peacemakers
1994 Pope John Paul II
1995 Newt Gingrich
1996 Dr. David Ho
1997 Andy Grove
1998 Bill Clinton and Kenneth Starr
1999 Jeff Bezos
2000 George W. Bush
2001 Rudolph Giuliani
2002 The Whistleblowers
2003 The American Soldier
2004 George W. Bush
2005 Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, & Bono
2006 You
2007 Vladimir Putin
2000 George W. Bush
2001 Rudolph Giuliani
2002 The Whistleblowers
2003 The American Soldier
2004 George W. Bush
2005 Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, & Bono
2006 You
2007 Vladimir Putin
2008 brian_nuevo
I still say it has to be Hillary Clinton.
For the last 8 years, she has endured the FULL fire of the entire right wing AND gotten America used to the idea of electing something besides an old white guy for President. THEN she threw her full weight behind Obama to win the office SHE fought so hard for.
and BlueJay, she bolster the market for pantsuits by tenfold. No small task right there either.
It’s suposed to be the most significant and prominient person on the world stage.
This year it is Obama, no one even comes close. And it’s not just him, it is the REACTION to him.
Thanks for the list Raptor. Anyone else know the significance of this pick?
1935 Haile Selassie
He was the head of Ethopia and was considered by Bob Marley and his Rastafarian movement to be the second coming of Christ for black people.