Alvin Greene Asks Time Magazine For “Man Of The Year” Award
One unexpectedly victorious campaign for unemployed South Carolina Democratic Senate nominee Alvin Greene just doesn’t seem like enough these days. In the midst of a confusing run against established GOP incumbent Jim DeMint, Greene dished to Time magazine on his polished campaign platform and his plan to defeat DeMint in an upcoming debate, but requested a few things in return: namely, cash and the magazine’s “Person of the Year” award.
The Time profile finds Greene, who has characterized himself for being mild-mannered and somewhat incoherent, as a level-headed everyman with big dreams who is tired of “being treated by the press like a carnival act,” and feels that the media’s questions about his mental state are unfair, seeing as most Democratic Senate candidates do not have to face similar scrutiny. We are introduced to his older brother, James Greene, Jr., who admires his brother for being “like someone coming up saying I’m going to fly to the moon.” And we are introduced to an expansion of Greene’s platform to include significant improvements in infrastructure and education:
“Through all the calls all day long, Greene keeps trying to refocus the conversation on what he feels is important, his message and his plans for an hour-long televised debate with Republican incumbent Jim DeMint in September. He has plans, he says, for more funding to widen roads and create jobs, for more money to train teachers, for reforms that would curtail long jail sentences for first-time, non violent crimes. He is back on message again, doing what he has always wanted to do, if maybe not exactly quite like this. ‘My campaign slogan,’ he says, ‘is Let’s Get South Carolina Back To Work.'”
He doesn’t exactly explain what those plans are, but to get South Carolina back to work, he’s going to need a bit of money. Greene made his first ever fundraising attempt in response to this interview, asking the Time representative who called to book him, “Does the candidate get paid?” And, surely, he’s going to need the money for his lofty goals. But one of those goals that money can’t buy he will have to wring from the hands of his interviewer himself: Time‘s Man of the Year award. And this is a campaign that Greene was more than eager to wage:
“I am the best candidate for the United States Senate in South Carolina,” he says, hitting his talking points, as he is apt to do. “And I am also the best person to be TIME magazine’s Man of the Year.”
Someone should remind Greene that he was already Time‘s Man of the Year, in 2006, though he may not want to continue sharing that title with the rest of us.
(h/t Atlantic Wire)
