Monday, December 18, 2006

I'm the Person of the Year! (No, I'm Not)

Time magazine has named you (all of you/us) Persons of the Year. They reason that digital democracy, such as YouTube, MySpace, and your humble blog, have made ordinary content providers the biggest influencers of events this year.

I think they copped out. The problem arose because the leader of the World's Only Superpower was clearly not leading events, but mostly running from them. But he is so powerful that he makes it hard for anyone else to be as consequential. We are now all waiting for a leader to emerge in the United States.

My nominee for Person of the Year: Hu Jintao, head of the Chinese government, for allowing capitalism to develop in the People's Republic of China – which I think will eventually lead to democracy, though of a peculiar form – and for once again not conquering Taiwan, even though there is not much we could do about it in our current embarrassed condition.

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