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Time picks the wrong person of the year
It's true, as Time declared, that Guiliani deserved honor "for having more faith in us than we had in ourselves, for being brave when required and rude where appropriate and tender without being trite, for not sleeping and not quitting and not shrinking from the pain all around him."
According to Time's own well-established criteria for the award it first bestowed on Charles Lindbergh in 1927, the winner is supposed to be the person who's had the greatest impact on the world over the previous 12 months, not the nicest, prettiest or most heroic.
Time, lamely, desperately, argues that bin Laden "is too small a man to get credit for all that has happened" since 9/11. But any school kid knows who set off the events that shook our world.
Giuliani, wise and blessedly apolitical though he was, "merely" reacted to them. Not to be cynical, he had the advantage of being a lame duck. But he deserves high praise for leadership-in-crisis, not to mention a statue in Central Park for proving that not every big-city politician is a third-rate hack.
Face it. Time caved because it knew how the public and half of its 4 million subscribers would react if bin Laden had won - with outrage. This is the price you pay when a phony award - a great PR gimmick for Time most years - is misperceived by the populace as an honor for greatness.
In years past, Time did not squirm or shrink from "honoring" history's greatest evildoers for their newsmaking prowess. As most people know, Adolf Hitler and Joe Stalin were both Man of the Year winners, not Thug of the Year winners, as was Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.
Hitler won for 1938, long before he really peaked as a despot. Hitler's then-pal, the equally deserving Stalin, won for 1939 and again for 1942. If you want to have a little fun, go to the archives at Time.com, where every Man of the Year cover photo and cover story can be found.
(Time out for a clarification: "Man" of the Year winners in the politically incorrect past have included things such as Earth in 1988, groups such as Young People in 1966, women such as Elizabeth II in 1952 and future nobodies such as Hugh S. Johnson in 1933. The first to be dubbed Time's "Person" of the Year was Amazon.com exec Jeff Bezos in 1999.)
Anyway, at Time.com, you can compare the two Stalin cover stories to see how Time cleaned up the dictator's bloody resume after he became our ally.
When Stalin and Hitler were allies sharing the carcass of Poland, Time matter-of-factly characterized Uncle Joe as a two-bit mass murderer who by 1939 had, among other horrible documented things, deliberately started a famine in Ukraine. But after Hitler attacked the U.S.S.R., Time made its steadfast 1942 Man of the Year sound like St. Francis of Assisi.
In other words, 2001 isn't the first year Time has made a fool of itself with its annual award.
