President-elect Joe Biden and vice-president-elect Kamala Harris have been named Time magazine’s “Person of the year” for 2020.
TIME Person of the Year: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. pic.twitter.com/XI1VH8R52G
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 11, 2020
It used to be “Man of the Year” back when men were manly, girls were girls, and people cared what Time magazine had to say about anything. At one time, it was read by an estimated 20 million people around the world. Its founder, Henry Luce, gathered a crackerjack stable of reporters and writers that included some of the leading lights of American journalism — Theodore H. White, blin, Robert Hughes, and John Hershey among them.
But as an article in Columbia Journalism Review on the magazine’s fall from dominance says, it was never in the “must-have” category of publications, only the “I want” category. In an age when competition for readers is cutthroat, Time’s staid reputation and colorless writing led to its fall from grace.
But it’s still read by opinion leaders and makers in Washington and New York, so the “Person of the Year” matters in that sense.
Charlotte Alter, the author of the piece, wrote that Biden’s pledge “to ‘restore the soul of the nation’ felt like antiquated hokum at a moment when Hurricane Trump was tearing through America, ripping through institutions, chewing up norms and spitting them out.”
It still feels like “antiquated hokum.” Describing Trump in that fashion doesn’t restore the soul of anybody or anything. But it sure feels good to bash Trump. She’ll get her soul restored tomorrow, I’m sure.
She interviewed Biden and praised his approach to the campaign. She wrote that to Biden “it wasn’t about fighting Trump with righteous vengeance, or probing any deeper rot that might have contributed to his ascent. Biden believed most voters simply wanted reconciliation after four years of combat, that they craved decency, dignity, experience and competence.”
What election is she looking at? The one that was just held shows Joe Biden didn’t “win” anything — certainly not because voters “simply wanted reconciliation after four years of combat.” The voters were voting against Donald Trump and are happy he lost.
The decision for Time to announce Biden and Harris for its top honor will likely rankle Trump supporters who will likely see the move as the latest example of how mainstream media will embrace the Biden administration for the next four years.
Trump’s detractors echoed much of what Alter argued in her article and see Biden and Harris as a return to normalcy and stability in D.C., which is precisely what many Trump supporters dread.
So radicals dictating a radical political agenda to spineless Joe Biden will be “normalcy and stability in D.C.”? Give me riots. Give me million-woman marches. Give me anything but that.
The question is: do Biden-Harris deserve any honor at all given that Time forgot one very important detail—that they’re not even sworn-in yet? It’s like giving Obama the Nobel Peace Prize a few months after he took office. It’s what they say they’re going to do that matters and, of course, being liberals, they’d never dream of not keeping their promises.
But there were some obvious candidates overlooked by Time that would be far more deserving.
The Time Person of the Year should be the owner of a store that was torched this summer or a small business owner who has lost everything because the government forced the closure of their business.
— Anna James Zeigler (@ajzeigler) December 10, 2020
Sorry guys, you’re just collateral damage.
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