Saturday, December 22, 2007

Real Man of the Year


The Weekly Standard has a great cover parodying Time Magazine's decision to name Vladimir Putin as "Person of the Year."
The Standard thinks American general, David Petraeus , who currently seems to be having some success in Iraq, deserves the honour.

The Standard writes: "Time ludicrously chose to make Russia's ex-KGB agent-turned president Vladimir Putin its cover boy. They just couldn't make Petraeus man--oops--person of the year. Our liberal elites are so invested in a narrative of defeat and disaster in Iraq that to acknowledge the prospect of victory would be too head-wrenching and heart-rending. It would mean giving credit to George W. Bush, for one. And it would mean acknowledging American success in a war Time, and the Democratic party, and the liberal elites, had proclaimed lost."
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3 comments:

  1. Jason Hickman8:21 AM

    Gerry, it's a good looking cover, but I'm going to play devil's advocate here (and in this case, "devil" can almost be taken literally), and disagree with WS on this one.

    I understand that if you boil away the rhetoric, the criteria for choosing someone as Man/Woman/Person/etc of the Year is "who has made the biggest news".

    Gen. Petraeus is certainly a contender for that title.

    But so too, clearly, is Putin. I'm still not convinced that the west is paying enough attention to what is going on in Russia right now. Putin is arguably the key reason why that country is changing, and not for the better as far as the rest of the world is concerned (IMHO).

    "Person of the Year" isn't a popularity contest. It isn't a clap on the back to someone we all like. It is supposed to go to the person who has made, or even who has the potential to make, a big impact - good or bad. And Putin - unfortunately - fits the bill.

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  2. Anonymous10:38 AM

    Oh well , I guess Time is impressed by Putin's $40Bn fortune of which part is stashed away in Switzerland and Liechtenstein .

    ... or perhaps it is how Putin's rivals and critics seem to fall out of 20 story apartment buildings.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,2230924,00.html

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  3. Anonymous9:07 AM

    'Ex'-KGB
    Are we sure about that?

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