Somewhere along the way, Time Magazine lost its way. Maybe it was the influence of AOL, long nicknamed “A-O-Hell” by my generation, which itself is somewhere between the nickname of “Generation Y” and “The Millennial Generation”. I’ll take either one, but I’ve always preferred “Generation Why” (this is probably the third or fourth time I’ve made this observation on this blog alone).
AOL killed my computer in the transition from high school to college. This was the computer that was a present from my parents to take to college, was exciting and new. It came with a trial AOL account that I used to connect with other fellow “pre-frosh” en route to Brandeis, few of whom were worth meeting in person. I got it in July and by the time it landed with me in Waltham, it was rapidly becoming cursed. Two weeks into school, it went off the deep end entirely, prompting Compaq to send a series of head-scratching techs to the remote ends of campus searching for Scheffres Hall. Their confusion only began in looking for a third-floor dorm room on a locked hall and ended with wondering why Compaq felt their time (probably $100-300/hour) was worth more than Compaq just replacing or refunding a computer that two of the three techs literally labeled as “possessed” on the work order form. Two people with hundreds of dollars an hour’s technical training using the word “possessed”. So much for technology, progress, experts, us being in a place beyond medieval witch doctors. The writing on the cinder-block wall, or at least on three sheets of carbon copied paper. Somewhere in a “box of doom”, I still have a yellow sheet, now even more yellowed, in papers I just refuse to throw away. Like the 16,000+ e-mails I’ve sent at work, they’re records and it all counts.
Or maybe none of it does. Just ask Time.
Time’s selection of Barack Obama as 2008 Person of the Year is hardly egregious, especially in comparison to some of their past picks. The original mandate from Henry Luce, who was at least a journalist despite myriad other problems (do we have anyone we can call a journalist anymore?) was to pick the person who had influenced things most, for good or for ill. Who was an emblem of the change that is innate to a year. Somewhere along the line, as with so much of America, an interest in true depiction got replaced by an interest in happy-talk. George (HW) Bush won in 1990 instead of Saddam Hussein. Rudy Giuliani won in 2001 instead of Osama bin Laden. You won in 2006, prompting the ire of nearly everyone and my supposition that everyone should start putting “2006 Person of the Year, Time Magazine” under their “Awards and Accomplishments” section of their resume, if only to ridicule the selection. End of history indeed.
So much for the legacy of a notoriety that had the guts to pick Gandhi 17 years before the Nobel Peace Prize had failed to do so (and it was too late as they tried to make up for it with their lame posthumous recognition). For a group that picked Hitler in ’38 and Stalin in ’39, demonstrating a foresight in recognizing the two most devastating and influential figures of the twentieth century before each had done much of their killing. And maybe 1941 is where it turned, picking FDR instead of Hideki Tojo.
Of course, there’s a part of me that says maybe Time knows too much. Maybe there’s a reason Tojo was passed over in 1941 and bin Laden in 2001. And it’s not just about wanting to be patriotic. But this is not the post for such conjecture, until maybe later.
Which brings us to Barack Obama. Clearly the second I clicked the revealing link into the Time Magazine article, I was expecting to see Obama’s tall grin looking back at me. Having been surprised and disappointed by so many picks in the past, I was almost surprised to find that my supposition had been correct. And yet, upon reflection, it became clear that this was not the right pick.
Think this is a special nod to the wave of change that seems to be coming with Obama-mania? Think again. This pick in an American election year has become a knee-jerk reaction for Time. W won in 2000, Clinton in 1992, Reagan in 1980, Carter in 1976. So really, this was the President-Elect’s award to lose all along. They probably had penciled it in for whoever won in Time board room meetings in January and moved on.
And seemingly more than any previous pick, Obama seems to have changed the landscape of how people think they’re looking at America. (After all, wasn’t Katherine Harris really the influential force in 2000, while W was just the beneficiary bystander?) Obama is an agent of action, a force for change, the first great rhetorical leader to hit the political scene since JFK. How could you pick anyone else?
And yet, my temptation is to say that 2009 is really the year for Obama. Not that people can’t win multiple times or, indeed, even back-to-back years (only previous back-to-back winner: Nixon in 1971-1972). Time even seems to acknowledge the fact that they’re jumping the gun, setting themselves behind the eight-ball with a title “Why History Can’t Wait”. And of course, a la my thoughts about 1941 and 2001 and even JFK, maybe they’re ensuring that they literally jump the gun. An assassination of Obama in the next year would be the most expected, telegraphed, universally anticipated assassination in world history. It seems painfully ironic that such cynical fear follows an individual known for inspiring hope and disparaging attitudes of terror. And yet I haven’t spoken to a single person about the historic Bryant Park rally on November 4th who wasn’t mentally scanning the crowd for firearms from the moment he and his family hit the platform.
So maybe Time’s hedging their bets, knowing that they can document the innocence and hope and anticipation that comes with Obama now, either on the precipice of its horrific fall or at the base camp of its tremendous climb to the future. Either way, it’s about the safest pick in history.
And yet, I doubt 2008 will be remembered for Obama. 2009, yes, whatever happens, but not 2008. 2008 will be about the melting of America’s economic standing. 2008 will be about the clash of hubris and reality, the tormented battle between those clinging to the Titanic’s decks and those packing up banquet food into lifeboats.
Time’s Person of the Year (then Man of the Year) was started in 1927, just in time to make an amazing pick in 1929. While they didn’t select anyone directly related to the collapse of the stock market and the American economy, they chose Owen D. Young for his “Young Plan”, a desperate effort to offset the German reparations payment schedule. What a prescient selection in determining how history would look back on the 1920’s! The Young Plan failed, of course, and the rest is profound history. But Time knew what it was doing back then.
So who really represents 2008’s influence on the coming years? The obvious road seems lined with some combination of Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson. The team that will be remembered for destroying the greenback dollar, plunging it into unprecedented worthlessness. With a mutual effort of eliminating interest rates and ratcheting up the printing of money, Bernanke & Paulson are the duo that are setting the dollar to its destiny as just another failed idol in the story of human belief.
So they’re the obvious pick, the real safe picks, the clear standouts. But for symbolic flair, neither of them, nor the pair, are my selection. My pick for 2008 Person of the Year is Bernard Madoff.
He’s a late entry to the contest and maybe disproportionately influential because the selection is made in December. He probably became important after the story on Obama had already gone to bed. But he is the single clearest embodiment of the attitude of 2008 and what this year means to history.
Can you imagine any other time in history, save maybe the late 1920’s, when the profit rates of a pyramid scheme would be able to pass themselves off as the realistic results of sound investing? When there would be so little oversight and investigation that a charlatan of this magnitude could be appointed to run the NASDAQ? Is there any more profound human embodiment of American greed, faith in money, reverence for capitalism, belief in the systems it invented, and total trust in the infinite upward spiral of wealth? Bernie, you really hit this one out of the park, and just in time. If only you could maintain the defiant refusal to face facts that we see in Rod Blagojevich, you’d be beyond perfect. Reading about the board room meeting you called where you admitted what happened, followed by turning yourself in, revealed that you have shreds of accountability that don’t really resonate with the America I know. Maybe you’ll have to share it with the still-clinging Illinois Governor.
But sure, Obama’s fine too. A hat-tip to the future, as even the great picks in ’29, ’30, ’38, ’39 were. Up near the top of the article, Obama admits his own fears, despite the image he’s projected to the nation. He outlines four scary priorities for the nation:
1. Economy
2. Afghanistan
3. Nuclear Proliferation
4. Climate Change
Oh boy. While I agree that no one could deny the precision of #1, it’s #2-4 that make me roll my eyes. Escalating a war may be his hidden solution to #1 (indeed, this picture hit me like a ton of bricks as the explanation of why government policy has so thoroughly greased the wheels of the economy’s slide, especially on the employment front… in an era where the all-volunteer military and lots of wars are big priorities, you have to de facto draft people by giving them no alternative jobs), but it offers nothing to a pacifist who has come to realize that we are in a post-conquest era in history. Nuclear proliferation? I posted over a year ago about how Iran will get toasters. It’s not that I don’t believe the world would be better off without nukes spreading further, but frankly, the worst nations in the world already have nukes and trying to maintain peace by keeping a stranglehold on science and technology is about as futile as shutting down the Internet by cutting physical cords, one at a time. And don’t even get me started on climate change. If you really think climate change is a third of the threat that most people seem to, then total, unrecoverable economic collapse is your only hope.
My hopes this season are pretty scant. I hope to get to New Mexico so I can bury myself in warmth, friends, family, green chile, and a part of the world that has managed to inspire me through some of the darkest times. I hope for a little snow, a bit of cheer, a lot of thought and reflection. I hope to find the energy to light at least one candle, to buy at least one gift, to make at least one wish for the year to come.
May God be with you.
