President George W. Bush has been named as Time‘s Person of the Year 2004 (although why they don’t say Man of the Year 2004 shows how the Orwellian use of political correctness is degrading the English language).
The choice is really a natural one. President Bush defeated the most well-funded candidate in US political history, but he also defeated a media which had become a cheerleader for Senator Kerry. He not only defeated Kerry, but obtained the first electoral majority in US Presidential politics since his father in 1988. President Bush’s resolve and determination won the day against Sen. Kerry’s vacillation and Hamlet-like indecision, and Bush has shown that his wartime leadership doesn’t match the cartoonish and relentlessly accusatory image the media painted of him.
Time has also named my good friends over at Power Line as the Bloggers of the Year, although the picture they used is somewhat less than flattering. The bloggers of Power Line were dogged in their pursuit of the truth over the Rathergate scandal, the Swift Boat issue, and the Oil for Food scandal. Power Line is certainly one of those blogs that deserves to be called Blog of the Year — they have both a wide volume of postings everyday, but also some of the most insightful analysis in the blogosphere. Congratulations to the Power Line crew for a job well blogged.
Though I certainly disagree with Time’s choice, I really can’t think of a person who is deserving- this really was a year of ignobility, in many ways, where it seemed nobody truly rose to the occasion that was 2004.
On the other hand, I don’t see any reason to ruffle your feathers over “person” of the year- it’s hardly Orwellian, merely clarifying. Using the term man, when speaking of a specific person (and not “man” in general), indicates someone of the male sex- which would thus beg the question, who is the “Woman of the year”. Better to use clear language and avoid potential silliness. There are places where PC is taken to excess (and I’m hardly a fan of it), but I don’t think this is such a problem…
Except last time I checked, Bush was male… using “Person” when referring to someone of a definite gender strikes me as both grammatically wrong and way too PC.
No contest. Karl Rove deserves to be declared this year’s “Man/Person of the Year”. Bush is the Mark Hamill of this Star Wars epic while Rove is the George Lucas. Without Rove’s direction, Bush would’ve amounted to absolutely nothing four years ago and again in 2004.
Before selecting such an obvious and undeserving choice, Time should have contemplated for a moment the magnitude of what Karl Rove accomplished this year. Rove was able to persuade millions of recently unemployed workers across the country to vote for the very man who made the relocation of their factories to China all the more profitable through lucrative tax breaks for outsourcing. Rove was able to persuade millions of lower and middle-income Americans to vote for a candidate who unapologetically supports the wholesale evisceration of social programs that they and their families are dependent upon. Rove was able to convince Americans getting little or nothing from the current tax cut to continue supporting a candidate who wants to make permanent these top-heavy tax cuts for people who live across the tracks from themselves when every serious person acknowledges that doing so will spur a financial crisis in a few short years.
And last but not least, Rove was able to convince American voters that a man who manipulated intelligence to lead us into war (and has fumbled every play in the war since) is the only person on Earth capable of achieving success in that very war in the next four years. In short, Rove crafted a strategy that rewarded a group of people who should be executed for war crimes with a second act. He’s perhaps the greatest political mastermind since Machiavelli.
Wow, we get all the typical dumb Democratic canards in one package.
Let’s see, you insinuate that millions of Americans are idiots who are utterly dependent on the paternalistic hand of government, lie about the tax cuts, lie about Iraq, and then wonder why your side lost and lost big.
Keep it up and the Democrats will go the way of the Whigs.
Are you seriously suggesting that Americans (including Republicans) are not dependent on the paternalistic hand of government? You mentioned farm subsidies in the post above. You should take a look at the county-by-county map of the 2000 and 2004 elections and see where farmers’ political allegiance lies. I know a number of Republican “values voters” who are constantly fuming about the need for Medicare to cover the cost of their prescription drugs. Jay Reding himself recently confessed his recent dependency on government-sponsored financial aid, sticking his hand out to finance at least four years of his private education. The inevitable endangerment of Social Security that will emerge from extracting more than a trillion dollars from its already underfunded budget and giving it to Wall Street stock brokers will also reinforce the vulnerability of dependent Americans when their feeding trough goes empty.
One LA Times political analyst whose name escapes me suggested the GOP’s dominance of government is unlikely to last as long as that of post-New Deal Democrats because the GOP’s borrow-and-spend ethos will prove sustainable for an even shorter period of time than the tax-and-spend modus operandi of yesteryear’s empowered Democrats. The bottom line is that the delivery of goodies from the government is the only way for a party to maintain power in this country, and despite Rove’s short-term success, George Bush and the Republican Party are not positioning themselves for the ability to continue doing that for a lengthy timespan.
As for my “lies” about tax cuts, let’s hear them. Am I incorrect in suggesting that the vast majority of all tax cut dollars are being directed to very small percentage of the population? I won’t even bother to disturb to your fantasy world utopia in Iraq. Clearly, your attempts to hold the Bush harmless for anything in Iraq has deemed you incapable of acknowledging reality over there. In your mind, the only problem we face over is “media negativity” at home. If only Dan Rather and Peter Jennings did stories about the new schools built in Iraq shortly before they get blown up by insurgents, conditions would be ideal there.
“Except last time I checked, Bush was male… using “Person†when referring to someone of a definite gender strikes me as both grammatically wrong and way too PC.”
The point, however, is that if there is a “Man of the year”, some feminist group will start bitching that there is no “Woman of the year”… so it’s more convenient to head it off altogether. Also, using person is more precise- I wish we could make the language much more gender-neutral myself, not to limit thought, but to allow more “third options”… especially given that I’m expecting massive growth in the population of non-gendered and trans-gendered humans and transhumans in the next century… 🙂
Except last time I checked, Bush was male… using “Person†when referring to someone of a definite gender strikes me as both grammatically wrong and way too PC.
The “person” doesn’t refer to Bush, it refers to the category. Saying “Man of the Year” means you’re referring only to the category of men, and not women. The usage is correct, because while Bush has definite gender, the category in which he leads (newsworthy people of the last year) does not.
I don’t think it was a good pick, myself. I favored the Mel Gibson/Michael Moore duo suggested by the guy over at The American Mind, which I felt typefied the vast schism between right and left of the last year.
Of course the irony of the “vast schism between left and right” this year is that both Mel Gibson and Michael Moore opposed the Republican Presidential candidate.
… using “Person†when referring to someone of a definite gender strikes me as both grammatically wrong and way too PC.
I’d see your point if it weren’t the case that Bush, in addition to being a man, is also a person.
Very well then, I shall now refer to Time‘s annual award as “Carbon-Based Lifeform of the Year.”
Wait, they gave one to “the Planet Earth” in 1988?!
Shit…
I think they nominated a computer one year, too.