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Unrest Is Best: Time Magazine’s Person Of The Year Is ‘The Protester’

» 43 comments

After being heavily derided for naming mid-aughts sensation Mark Zuckerberg as its 2010 Person of the Year, Time Magazine has bounced back and gotten it right this year. The magazine has named “The Protester” its 2011 Person of the Year, which, the magazine notes, marks a rather miraculous comeback for that form of political action. In 2011, political protests literally changed the world, and even made something of a dent in the American cultural landscape.

For a very long time, political protests, no matter how large, seemed like so much wallpaper, ubiquitous and of dubious relevance. Even the Tea Party, which carried the accessories of political protest, was more like a series of pep rallies for a (very effective) political movement than anything resembling unrest. All of that changed this year, though, beginning with the Arab Spring that started in Tunisia, and spread to Egypt and throughout the region.

In the United States, the Occupy Wall Street protests are all anyone can talk about for the past few months, but that movement was foreshadowed at the beginning of the year, when thousands of Wisconsin protesters took over the state’s capitol to oppose Gov. Scott Walker‘s anti-union policy agenda.

The Time article thoroughly traces the protests that dominated the world, and the news, this year, and tries to face the inevitable reality behind these movements.

Among several runners-up, ironically, was Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, whose budget proposal was roundly dismissed by anyone with a clue, yet who was still given “credit” by those same people for coming up with something. Time credits him for single-handedly bending the political conversation to debt and deficits, away from job creation. Maybe they meant it in the same way they meant that Ayatollah Khomeni was “Man of the Year.” That distraction has pulled the country away from solving the problem that it’s in now, to focus on a problem whose solution has made things worse in the near-term.

Other runners-up include freshly-minted royal Kate Middleton, Chinese political prisoner Ai Weiwei, and bin Laden-hunter Adm. William McRaven.

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  • Anonymous

    The same rag who made Hitler and Stalin (twice!) person of the year – go figure.

  • http://al-gored.myopenid.com/ Al Gored

    Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.
    The Protester
    Announced on NBC, Obama approved.

  • Anonymous

    Why are people protesting Time’s decision?  They must like irony.

  • http://mediamatters.org/ Leedog

    Lol!! Good one!!

  • http://mediamatters.org/ Leedog

    Donald Trump is NOT going to be happy with TIME’s decision!!

  • Anonymous

    Hey Tommy, maybe you heard of a little group called the Tea Party.   They marched right past the windows of Congress in the hundreds of thousands in the run up to Obamacare.  They sort of threw Nancy Pelosi’s Congress out of office.
    It was in all the papers.
    The Occupoopers couldn’t match a tenth of their power on their best day.
    Time Magazine is a friggin’ joke.

  • Anonymous

    Too bad they didn’t have a Racist Of The Year then the Right could win something too.

  • http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-sjc1/hs322.snc3/28695_104339339610961_100001046869519_36793_4471129_n.jpg COB™

    Since 2001, Time Magazine’s circulation has dropped by more than 1,000,000 copies.
    The average monthly traffic for Time.com has dropped by 745,000 since 2007.

    The data: http://stateofthemedia.org/2011/magazines-essay/data-page-4/

    This isn’t your grandfather’s Time Magazine.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FSPIVAFYI672OH5NOKVRTEZA4U MadCharles

    The cover just goes to show how irrelevant the Time rag is.

  • Gloves E. Donahue

    Walker’s “anti union policy” saved teachers’ jobs.

    Ask Lara Logan how well Egypt is faring. Check with their tourist industry what shariah law is bringing them:

    “The end of Sharm el-Sheikh? Islamist parties call for ban on Westerners drinking, wearing bikinis and mixed bathing on Egyptian beaches”

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073610/The-end-Sharm-el-Sheikh-Islamist-parties-ban-Westerners-drinking-wearing-bikinis-mixed-bathing-Egyptian-beaches.html

  • Anonymous

    Oh, brother…the movement that is collapsing from the weight of its own meaninglessness is Time’s “Person of the Year”.

    This will surely be its death knell.

  • Anonymous

    Wow – way to read the article dummy.

  • Anonymous

    The rise of the Tgaggers is history. (2009 and 2010) So are you complaining about the 2010 selection?  Neo you are living in the past!  The accomplishments you cite are not 2011 accomplishments.  Rally in DC August 2010, Republicans took Congress November 2010.

    By the way who would you have Time Magazine pick out of the Tgaggers Party as person of the year?

    Step away from the TV because FUX News and Glenn Beck have you brainwashed.

  • Anonymous

    Err, what?  Your name is Osama Obama Biden (Bi)n La(den), and you call him the troll?  LOLOLOL.  You just made my day sweetie.

  • Anonymous

    Bitter idiot.  They did that when genius?  Answer me fool.  Then riddle me how that is applicable to 2011.  Were they one of the groups in 2011 across the globe protesting something?

    What an infant.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Watchingfrogs-Boil/100002016403213 Watchingfrogs Boil

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  • Just some Blow Hard…

    well who says the person of the year has too be good?  It should be the one person (or persons) who had the biggest effect on the world. 

    Think about what we wouldn’t have had with out Hitler and WWII.  There would be no cold war, there would be no Israel, the USSR would be a hell of a lot smaller, the depression would have lasted a lot longer, the United States and the USSR would not be super powers, the American car industry wouldn’t have taken off in the 50′s, and there really wouldn’t have been a space race.

    Sometimes great things come from dark times.

  • Anonymous

    Hahahahahaha….
    Comprehension is not your friend.

    The point is you friggin’ retard  is that Time wants to make the protester the POTY and turns to the Occupoopers and their pathetic little tantrum while they completely ignore real protests that actually had an impact like the Tea Party.
    Understand….?
    It is laughable for them to pretend the OWS movement will have any real impact when a historic protest occurred only a year ago and they turned their back on it.
    Your argument about what is contemporary might have been relevant had Time not reached back into the past to mention other dusty little leftie protests while they completely ignore a political tsunami that the OWS was measured against every single day.

  • Just some Blow Hard…

    Yeah he will talk about starting a new magazine and how much better it will be, then quit and pocket the start up money.

  • Just some Blow Hard…

    Thant would go to stonepark.  He linked a neo-nazi website to debunk a claim I made. 

  • Just some Blow Hard…

    and you do it by trolling message boards???

  • Just some Blow Hard…

    Its a trend that all print media is seeing.  This has nothing to do with bias or what not, its called the rise of the internet, iphones, ipads, and tablet devices.

  • Just some Blow Hard…

    If you are against something so vehemently, you should really learn how to spell it.

  • Gloves E. Donahue

    Go book a plane trip to L.A. with Alec Baldwin. Robert Wagner wants to take you two on a boat ride.  Jackass.

    Why Shariah?

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16Shariah-t.html?ref=shariaislamiclaw

  • Cecelia

    I don’t get the picture.  It looks like there’s been a Gangsta Rap Spring.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_EOTQDJK7LUU43OZGQDCXABKJQM patrick m

    The only person I know who gets Time is my dentist and I think he steals them from the library archive they are so old.

  • Anonymous

    Or a badly done Gap ad

  • Just some Blow Hard…

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia_law

    I would rather boat with Wagner and fly with Baldwin than cower in fear of fictional straw men.

    Such a thin skin for a man or woman or child with Capone as an avatar.

    enthusiasm…

  • Just some Blow Hard…

    well that what it looks like to me. I mean, if it is the biggest cover up in history, it seems you could do a little more than make a website and spend your time commenting on news stories. I don’t think Deep Throat or Woodward and Bernstein did that.

  • Anonymous

    No, the point is that it’s 2011 and the Tea Party was at its strongest in 2009 and 2010.  Why would Time include a protest movement that occurred two years ago?

    Also, your American-centric mind is forgetting that OWS is not the only protest that has happened this year.  Protests brought down the Tunisian government, the Egyptian government, and are currently being killed by the hundreds in Syria.  Protest movements across the world have re-shaped our political reality in significant ways not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union, yet you decide to only address OWS…

  • Anonymous

    Neo, you might want to stop before you make a complete fool of yourself.  Oh wait!…… Its too late!

  • Anonymous

    Listen up, Twoeyed-no brain-willy. Why don’t you read the article and then tell me what, exactly,  the “Occupy” movement has accomplished.

    Better yet, why don’t you just leave. Your presence here is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.

  • http://twitter.com/bohratom Bohr Atom

    Tommy we all know you are as liberal as Obama but can u at least get some facts right. Your comment that the tea party “was more like a series of pep rallies ” is factually incorrect. In fact just the Tea Party rally in Washington DC outnumbered every ows protest combined.

    Its ok to be a liberal Tommy but dont make up your own facts.

  • RW

    That cover picture is truly in the eye of the liberal media only – the OWS crowd was ‘overwhelmingly’ white.  This picture would have you believe it was diverse – not.

  • Anonymous

    Occu-tools

  • Morgan_Said

    The OWS movement was created by the Occupier In Chief from the OWH. It’s a front organization that is going through the “get it some credibility” period before the 2012 campaign really gets going and it’s real purpose is to confront the Tea Party with its Union Goons to shut it down and change the debate to a contest between the evil Tea Party and the poor 99%ers.

  • Anonymous
  • Anonymous

    The rhetorical comparison made when you suggested Time’s honorable mention of Paul Ryan was meant in the same way as Ayatollah Khomeni’s selection was simply classless of you, Mr. Christopher; beyond the pale.  This is ‘liberalism’ nowadays?

  • https://me.yahoo.com/a/7nZpGKwT1fVdlb3YN6DXlA8PViJDMLL2bO_q#5aa2e ganymede

    Obviously, this was the year of the Protester – it was a worldwide phenomena and it isn’t going to go away. People have had it with the existing order in nearly every part of the world and democracy is evolving to the point where we don’t have to take the crap of the one-tenth of the 1% any longer. I almost think it’s similar to Martin Luther (not King) when he led a movement of Protesters (Protestants) who broke away from the abuses and excesses of the Catholic Church in the 16th Century. Watching the antics of many prominent rightwingers, I can’t help but think that some of them have to be secret agents working for the Protesters. I would also include some Tea Partiers in the Protester category, but they are such political neophytes that they probably don’t have a clue about what they’re really doing.  When Beck shouts “Treason” at the protesters, and when Gingrich and all the other rightwingers crudely put down what’s happening in the Middle East and with OWS,  they are  actually encouraging and energizing millions of people to look seriously at what must be done to correct the abuses of our financial overlords and their governmental cronies. Rightwing propaganda isn’t working as well as it use to, no matter how much money is thrown at it. It’s no mystery as to why the economy is so rotten and it isn’t all because of Obama!  And demographics are also working against the backward white people in this country who blindly follow orders from Murdoch and Limbaugh. It’s time for a change and that’s what 2012 is going to be about. We can’t go any further to the right before we truly become a fascist state.

  • Anonymous

    . . .but [the Tea Party] are such political neophytes that they probably don’t have a clue about what they’re really doing.

    Engineering the largest single congressional turnover in most people’s lifetime?  I know, I know.  It doesn’t compare to crapping on cop cars and raping people while trying to end capitalism, the one economic system which brings prosperity to people – even the poor (who, by comparison to the poor of non-capitalistic societies, are immeasurably better off) by, for one, so stressing communities through continual street action that they spiral towards bankruptcy and endanger a systemic collapse.

    Awareness of such is one reason the current multi-decadal trend towards increasing self-identity with conservative principles – that which prevents fascism (which is a state-centric system, enabled by big government progressives) instead of feeds it – as well as the structural capability (provided by the internet) of free individuals to source information for themselves, will continue; in spite of the fevered fantasies (and disingenuous rhetoric) of aging leftist failures wedded to their backwardness.

  • Anonymous

    They should call it “Newsmaker of the Year” if they’re going to include bad people, too. Almost all “Person of the Year” awards imply approval and support of the recipient from the award bestower.

  • Anonymous

    “Bitter idiot.  They did that when genius?  Answer me fool.”

    Pot meet kettle. Why are all you liberals so angry? He didn’t call anyone names and you managed 4 slams in one short and meaninglessness paragraph.

  • Anonymous

    They should have included the picture of the guy crapping on the police car. 

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