There was a time, so to speak, and it wasn’t that long ago, when there was much anticipation and a great deal of debate over who might be named and who should be named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. This year, the relative disinterest is stunning. And why not? The publication’s selection of Barack Obama, though arguably correct, set a new and embarrassing low in utterly vacuous justification.
A half-century ago, Time was a highly respected weekly newsmagazine which, though it clearly tilted to the left, was known for its strong journalism and institutional integrity. Those days are long gone.
The magazine reports circulation of roughly 3.4 million, basically flat since 2007 but about 18 percent below where it spent the 15 previous years. Meanwhile, the U.S. population has grown by over 20 percent. The level-off of the past five years isn’t due to anything Time has done, but is instead a by-product of the self-immolation seen at Newsweek, its principal competitor. Things are so bad at Newsweek that its owners recently decided to terminate the print edition when 2012 ends.
Time claims “readership” 20 million. Sure. We’re really supposed to believe each copy of the magazine is read by an average of six people. I certainly don’t. The better indication of the weekly yawns the magazine induces in the public is its newsstand sales, which during the second half of 2010 amounted to a paltry 79,000. Each issue is typically so thin you wonder why anyone bothers to publish it, let alone read it.
Those who think that Time might be making up for lost circulation and ad revenue on the web should know that for all its supposedly well-crafted and surely costly content, its total web traffic is only about half that of the usually one-page Drudge Report. Perhaps that explains why Drudge hadn’t even taken note of Time’s selection of Obama as of when this column was drafted.
Or it may simply be that Drudge read — more likely, tried and failed to read — any one of the magazine’s tributes to Obama. Michael Scherer’s five-page love letter describing Obama’s supposed accomplishments and second-term ambitions could induce almost anyone to vomit. If that didn’t get to you, Richard Stengel’s pathetic wrap-up to his tribute would: “For finding and forging a new majority, for turning weakness into opportunity and for seeking, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union, Barack Obama is TIME’s 2012 Person of the Year.” But to get to either Scherer’s or Stengel’s pieces, most readers would have had to get past the 2012 Person of the Year home page, which describes Obama’s great year thusly: “In 2012, he found and forged a new majority, turned weakness into opportunity and sought, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union.”
In an even slightly tolerable establishment media environment, other journalists would be laughing Time into well-deserved oblivion for trotting out such obvious nonsense about Obama’s desire for a “more perfect union.” But we all know that won’t happen.
Barack Obama showed absolutely no interest in a “more perfect union” during the presidential campaign. Never has an incumbent president premised his electoral success so completely on turning Americans against each other and treating his opponents as agents of evil.
To Obama and his apparatchiks, Mitt Romney wasn’t just a guy who disagreed with the President about how to grow an economy. The former Massachusetts governor and highly successful businessperson, who in fact helped build several highly successful companies while creating thousands of jobs, was really a guy who heartlessly threw workers to the wolves and stood by while their spouses got cancer and died. To serve this and other twisted narratives, Obama and his campaign didn’t merely shade the truth; they lied so shamelessly and so often that it became literally impossible to keep up with the accumulated mendacity. That, and not the drivel about a “more perfect union,” is why one could argue that Obama really was 2012′s Person of the Year.
Obama and his campaign’s assertions and tactics never would have succeeded without a pliant press firmly in their corner. To name just three of the most obvious examples of journalistic malfeasance:
• They falsely portrayed the economy, which is in reality in the midst of the worst “recovery” since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal brought about eight years of misery during the 1930s, as being on the verge of a solid recovery while virtually ignoring the ongoing pain and suffering of the unprecedented millions of long-term unemployed and under-employed.
• They minimized the frightening build-up of trillions of dollars in debt our children, grandchildren, and generations yet unborn will have to repay.
• They ignored the horrors of Operation Fast and Furious and the negligence which led to the death of America’s ambassador and three others in Benghazi.
If Obama is Person of the Year, it’s only logical, based on their conduct, that the press should receive a related award as Enablers of the Year.
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RE: Time’s Embarrassing ‘Person of the Year’
Time's staff have lost the ability to blush. This event is perfectly consistent with the gooey brown glop that each of Time's staff members have brazenly worn on their proboscises for the last four years.
That gooey brown glop is smelly too!
Rod Blagojevich to be released from prison
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2012/12/14/rod-blago…
The last time I read a Time Magazine was about ten years ago.
But it is entirely fitting for those who want to throw off their American ethos to vote for the most anti-American POTUS in U.S. history. And their leftist dogma is uber alles – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/08/20/americans-hop… when radical politics trumps national secuirty , what else can one expect – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/08/24/when-radical-…
Adina Kutnicki, Israel – http://www.adinakutnicki.com/about/
I love Israel and her GOD. The true Creator of all good things.
My last read was in the 80's
Being in Canada, I far prefer MacLean's magazine.
I have never read a Time or a Newsweek, or a lying book such as the Koran. And outhouse paper would be the proper disposal of any of the above. Actually, most magazines in today’s market are worthy of the outhouse.
In 1938, another darling of the left, and idiological equal of Barack Hussein Obama, Adolf Hitler, graced the cover as Time's "man of the year". Why would anybody care about President Stinky (BO) being on the cover? I think it's perfectly appropriate.
Hitler a darling of the Left? Get real. You've been reading that dreadful Jonah Goldberg book a little too often. Everyone on the Left despises Hitler. That's one of the few good things we can count on from them.
you're wrong – the islamists idolize him and the left is in bed with the islamists
So Leftists can't hate other leftists? Is that what you're saying?
That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
And the Islamic Left IDOLIZES Hitler and the Left NEVER calls them out on it. EVER.
BTW the late Pierre Elliot Trudeau, former PM of Canada, and a Liberal, thought Hitler was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Many on the Left ate up the same Eugenics ideas as the Nazis had.
I do not subscribe to Time. Many years ago it was given to me at Xmas. I finally told the giver I did not want it.
For Time to nominate Barack Obama as the Man of the Year has got to be the ultimate insult. All he has done, or is doing is ruining the USA, and what it has stood for, a leader for the world to look up to.
SHAME on TIME.
Well, it’s only natural for any country, which elects presidents, supported by Communists: the Men of all the USSR years, or of the months or of the weeks always were our dearest leaders only, from Stalin to Gorbachev. Maybe it’s a bit new to Obama’s voters, but they have to adjust to this familiar tradition of all the Communist regimes now. As for the Time, I can’t but smile, remembering the good old days of my Soviet youth, when it was one of the most expensive magazines here: five years of labor camps just for reading the American imperialists’ propaganda and two more, if reading it aloud (for disseminating the subversive ideas). But this December the Times editorial board would be surely rewarded by our gone chiefs with the highest Order of Lenin for its great service to the Common Cause of World Revolution, I have not a slightest doubt of it! Rostislav, Saint-Petersburg, Russia.
Yeah, when Time does Man of the Year these days, you can pretty much bet it's actually "Communist of the Year."
Time magazine…. I'm drawing a blank. Are they the ones that sold for a dollar then went out of print?
All those liberal rags confuse me.
"All those liberal rags confuse me." Me too.
In an emergency, TIME MAGAZINE may suffice for outhouse toilet paper.
Sure…..If a koran isn't available.
LMAO….yes
)
Heheheh! Right ON!!!
They keep them in doctors and dentists offices sometimes, and sometimes I'll read the idiocy just for a laugh.
Time is a propaganda machine for the government.
The fact that Time once named Hitler 'person of the year' says it all. Time's credibility went down the toilet back then.
Maybe they should call it 'cretin of the year'.
if that's not proof that Leftists were capable of Idealizing Hitler, I don't know what is.
Time also nominated Sarah Palin twice!
Knowing Time, it was probably a joke.
From a venerable American institution to an eviscerated and meaningless ritual, Time's Man (or Person, let's not be sexist now)-of-the-Year choices have careened all over the map. Last year it was "The Protester."
http://history1900s.about.com/od/people/a/Man-Of-…
Were I famous or notorious enough, I'd no more wish to be named "Man of the Year" than I would accept a Freedom Medal from Barack Obama.
Or a Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1938, when TIME thought that Hitler was "Man of the Year", it was owned and operated by Henry Luce, a right-wing Republican, who appreciated the fact that Hitler got the German trains to run on time (no pun intended). Learn the history, folks.
Actually it was Mussolini who has historically been attributed to 'at least' about getting the trains running on time!
Thank you. If these are the facts, and I seem to recall they are, then there are some who will not care for them.
It's clear to me that as far as the citizens are concerned very little has changed over the years, whether the politics of a country are democratic or the country is a dictatorship, the 'People' are treated as mugs or brainless sheep by the leaders.
The elected leader just misinforms, or lies to the people and the dictator doesn't have to bother so much with that 'nicety'. The democratic leader gets away with it as the majority of the people voted for him and will stick with him very much like a football fan says, "My team right or wrong!" this is most clearly seen in the USA but all democratic systems work in the same way. To quote Winston Churchill, "Democracy is a terrible form of governmental system but I'll go along with it until I find a better one.
Good luck, mugs!
People assume if someone is named 'person of the year' it was for something 'good or heroic' when in fact this is not true. BO is just another added to a long list of dictators, murderers, and 'cult of personality' types that have been named 'person of year' in the past by a rag mag run by propagandists. that is all.
If Time had any balls, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens woud be POTY and the cover story would be about the Benghazi attack and coverup.
That's right on! Or the two SEALS who went against orders to stand down, who instead sacrified their lives to attempt to save their fellow Americans! I will always remember Joe Biden's CRUDE remark to one of the SEALS's grieving father which described the "size" of his lower anatomy. Yep, smiley Biden, real man of class!
Biden wears his a– on his face.
"second term ambitions could induce almost anyone to vomit" Now there's an appropriate name for this propaganda rag "VOMIT". It certainly isn't intelligent or factual.
part of Kipling's "Copybook Headings" comes to mind:
As it will be in the future; it was at birth of man. There are only four things certain since social progress began. That the dog returns to his vomit and the sow returns to her mire, and the burnt fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the fire.
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as water will wet us, as surely as fire will burn,
The god's of the copybook heading with terror and slaughter return.
Once BHO won the election in November, Time's choice was a done deal.
Time has obviously destroyed its reputation for honest reporting and apparently is now attempting to return to the glory of Mad magazine. Unfortunately, there too they fail and fall in the category of mush media. Freedom of speech, as exercised by honest/comprehensive/unbiased reporting, is hardly upheld by the current media, …or the current administration.
Time is out.
Only thing I can say is who paid Time to make a traitor the "Man of the Year?"
I will get a copy for my birdcage…………could I be charged with animal cruelty?…..William
I tried it in my cat's litter box. He just looked at me and said "that's redundent".
I thought about the cat box but my cats are touchy and may retaliate………….William
only if the poor bird can read.
Time and the NY Times emiT political slim designed to confuse the uninformed mind into partaking in their crimes against the rational mind.
He is without doubt the person of the year…..a superlative political con man who duped a majority of the "new Americans" into giving him another 4 years to work his "con," the transformation of America" now free of restraint, secure in the knowledge that the "new Americans" are as dumb as he knew they were. He and his fellow con artists made sure of it.
Person of the year, not a good thing, kind of like a wanted poster but not really wanted.
William
Now Times management will be invited to the WH for dinner again.
This is a joke. Time magazine sucks and so does their “Person of the Year”
Seems fitting that a weak, spineless, incompetent like Obama should be called "Person of the Year". Not many people would call him a man–this year or any other.
You're right. He's not a man. Not by any definition of the term. It's been said that if Hillary gave Obama one of her balls, she'd still have one more than him. That's also why she's fond of pant suits. If she wore a dress, her balls would show.
Who will be surprised if this is Time magazine's goodbye year. I for one say GOOD RIDANCE.
Perhaps a scowling Obeyme on the cover with several articles delineating his dubious associations, economic failures, dangerous islamophilia and his collectivist desires would gain readership.
Time gone by… Time wasted… No Time for you… Time to move on.
Time still exists?
I'll be darned.
Time is rag on the year in a very crowded field.
Time is not on our side! XD
(see what I did there?)
It could be worse:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2012/dec/10/…
I look at both "Time" and "Newsweek" every once in a while. When I was younger,my family used to have a subscription to it. These days,we don't. It's a shame. We need better journalists than we have today.
Speaking of ' Hilly' !!! I"not sure I know what an old and recycled dooch bag looks like, but I bet it"s a
cross between Hillary Clinton and Gloria Allred. There I've said it and if theres any obama bags out
there don"t like my comment, you can puke in the bag. While we're about it, MR. NICE GUY himself
was one of the few honkies invited to the white house for obamas birthday bash. TOM HANKS!
CHER, took her mother to the WH to meet the. man as a birthday treat. At least Cher thought it was a
treat.Cher has also boasted about having her home stocked with toilet paper with Sarah Palin"s face on it.
While the grateful honkie Tom Hanks was eating,drinking and I'm sure sucking up, there was people
pinching pennies to buy a can of beans. My comments are honest and upfront. If the truth is offensive,
well get bent, maybe you'll feel better.
Well, I think, . . . you're all making way too much of this, . . . as I would simply say for a lotta other mags, "TIME" is a form of mere art work, . . . I would say, don't worry over it, . . . who of sound mind should really care, . . .
Man if you want artworksy mags forget Time, go with Life.
What a charmed life Obama's had. We don't have access to his college records to determine what kind of a student he was or who paid for his education, although available evidence suggests the education was funded by the Saudis and he was a mediocre student at best. But mediocrity didn't keep others from moving him up the food chain with donations to his political campaigns. Then he wins the Nobel Peace prize for absolutely no reason and now Time names him the Man of the Year when what he really deserves is the award for the Worst President in our history. Strange how his actual failures and shortcomings never seem to get any attention while fictitious myths and fabrications abound. I keep waiting for his "Jim Jones" moment but every time it nears the media seems to rescue him.
Obama is, and has been, to a large extent a Media Project in social engineering: breaking the color "barrier" for POTUS. As such Obama cannot be allowed to fail. His first term, by any objective standard, was desultory at best and ruinous at the worst and, mercifully, it should have been his last. But the NYT-led Media doubled-down on its' ill-conceived, ill-fated, project out of self-serving desperation. America has been betrayed by an arrogant, pretentious Media.
Amazing how disrespectful you folks are. I think you're all the problem with this country. You don't have respect for the presidency of your own nation. Many times has my candidate lost, yet I have never stooped to the level you all occupy. Rally the troops and come out and fight.
Hey, this is the United States of America, people are allowed to criticize their leaders if they __k it up.
more of the controlled,discredited media. Time mag. has no credibility. Journalism is dead in America. obama or whomever he is, is a psychotic germ. He and anyone-everyone connected to him belong behind bars until the people decide what to do with them. Every last one of them,from past and present administrations,bankers,lobbyists,staffers the whole lot. On local,state and federal levels. Lest not forget international also.
Obama is a Bone in The Throat. I have been vomiting since he was elected. He and all his help are at the top of the audacious heap. He is evil and I hate every thing he does. And his rotten soul too. Just take the vowels from his name and what is left over is what he truly is. And he is not believer into Jesus. He is a devouring wolf in wolfs clothing; Not hiding his wicked design of ineptitude but in front of God and the world. I will be glad when his evil doings are really made know. A liar, a bigot and a baby Killing bastard, No, not that, he is not fatherless, for is father is Satan and the devil is his brew. He is not a natural American citizen. His Afrikaner terrorist daddy makes him ineligable to hold the office. It’s why he has no love for America. He is not American.
Did everyone forget that Bush was person of the year in 2000 and then again in 2004?
Time Magazine selecting Obama as "Man of the Year" was a real tough decision as the finalist were oh so close:
1. Obama
2. Roseanne Barr
3. Charlie Rangle
4. Elena Kagan
5. Anthony Weiner
Congratulations Obama you just squeaked in ahead of this fine gaggle of Patriots !!!!!
Time Magazine thinks that when Obama sits alone at the White House dining table, it's the finest gathering at one table since the Last Supper !
The Real Man of the Year should be "The Men and Women of the U.S. Military" who are laying down their lives for America while the treacherous politicians are destroying the nation from within.
Leave it to a liberal rag like TIME to name OBAMA as their PERSON of the YEAR noting they once named ADOLPH HITLER as thier 1938 MAN OF THE YEAR and remember when they named GARBAGECANCHAV as their MAN OF THE DECADE? and now they and a big article about GUN CONTROL featuring AMERICAS WORST MAYOR,MICHEAL BLOOMBURG I mean its a wonder a liberal rag like TIME is still alive I mean it needs to go the way of NEWSWEEK