“‘Time Person of the Year’ Likely to Be, Well, a Person.” We know this thanks to Advertising Age, which went to a luncheon panel at the Time & Life building yesterday and dutifully wrung out an article about the groundbreaking proceedings.
“Next month, Time magazine may pick a specific person to be its Person of the Year — as opposed to ‘The American Soldier’ in 2003, for example, or ‘Endangered Earth’ in 1999,” Advertising Age reported today. Explained Time Managing Editor Richard Stengel: “I personally like it when a person is Person of the Year.”
That was a stunning declaration, one which flew in the face of the “plenty of pretty abstract suggestions” given by an eclectic group of panelists — among them, “You” from Brian Williams, “All of Us” from Emilio Estevez, and “Reality” from Arianna Huffington. Given Stengel’s preference, though, they can all safely be written off, according to Advertising Age — though not before being written up in its article first.
According to the magazine, however, “the brainstorming did turn up some candidates with Social Security numbers,” including President Bush, Nancy Pelosi, and John Murtha, and other persons such as Kim Jong-Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (Meantime, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, deftly demonstrating that he knows which side his bread is buttered on, said he doesn’t want Ahmadinejad “on the cover of the most important magazine in the world.”)
We suppose there is a certain attempt at humor in reporting all this, but we just don’t see the point. Except perhaps for one, indicated in Advertising Age‘s final paragraph:
“The formal decision will come in December, after Time staffers start working on several possibilities in case any of them gets picked — and after the magazine has milked the speculation for the maximum public relations value.”
Let the milking begin.
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.