Time's Person of the Year Is "The Protester" 543
Hugh Pickens writes "Time's editor Rick Stengel announced on The Today Show that 'The Protester' is Time Magazine's Person of the Year: From the Arab Spring to Athens, from Occupy Wall Street to Moscow. 'For capturing and highlighting a global sense of restless promise, for upending governments and conventional wisdom, for combining the oldest of techniques with the newest of technologies to shine a light on human dignity and, finally, for steering the planet on a more democratic though sometimes more dangerous path for the 21st century.' The initial gut reaction on Twitter seems to be one of derision, as Time has gone with a faceless human mass instead of picking a single person like Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi who Time mentions in the story and is widely acknowledged as the person who set off the 'Arab Spring.' In 2006, Time chose "You" with a mirrored cover to much disappointment, picked the personal computer as 'Machine of the Year' and Earth as 'Planet of the Year,' proving 'that it should probably just be "Story of the Year" if they aren't going to acknowledge an actual person,' writes Dashiell Bennett. 'By not picking any one individual, they've basically chosen no one.'"
Not a Person (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe the important thing is that a idea is the driver for change, no just an individual.
It is much harder for the daily news media to sell an idea than it is sell an individual being the center of everything.
Re:TGINS (Score:5, Interesting)
Although on second thought, "Anonymous" would have been a good choice as well.
Not just the hacker group or 4channers, but all people acting anonymously, like whistleblowers and protesters. Would have been an counterpoint to Zuckerberg.
Ridiculous (Score:0, Interesting)
Are they seriously lumping together the Occupy protesters with the rest of the protesters around the world laying their lives on the line to overthrow ruthless dictators? Really!?
Re:They Didn't Choose 'No One' (Score:2, Interesting)
Their presence *is* their message.
Yes, but the campers aren't delivering the message you were hoping for. Their presence is often a burden on the 99% (small business, workers, commuters, people/families who use parks, taxpayers who have to pick up the cleanup bill, etc) and irrelevant to the 1%.
Occupy a creation of Adbusters media organization (Score:5, Interesting)
Deluded much?
No, just misinformed. While Occupy may have been co-opted by the Democratic Party, ACORN and related groups who are desperate for a tea party organization of their own, Occupy is a creation of the Canadian media organization Adbusters who is related to the former.
... Adbusters has launched numerous international campaigns, including Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week and Occupy Wall Street, and is known for their "subvertisements" that spoof popular advertisements."
"The Adbusters Media Foundation is a Canadian-based not-for-profit, anti-consumerist, pro-environment[1] organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia. Adbusters describes itself as "a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age." Characterized by some as anti-capitalist or opposed to capitalism,[3] it publishes the reader-supported, advertising-free Adbusters, an activist magazine with an international circulation of 120,000[4] devoted to challenging consumerism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters [wikipedia.org]
Re:Occupy hasn't been co-opted? (Score:4, Interesting)
No more than the Occupy movement has been co-opted by the Democratic party and its operatives.
Really? If you asked them, you'd know that they have very little use for Obama's protection of bankers. A lot of them have made it very clear that they don't support the Democratic Party or its candidates. Not one national Democratic Party figure has taken part in an Occupy event. They've spent none of the money they've collected on supporting Democratic candidates.
Stopped being credible in 2001 (Score:5, Interesting)
When they made the cowardly decision not to make it Osama Bin Laden. It wasn't intended to be a high school popularity contest; it was the biggest news maker of the year; e.g. Hitler during the WWII era. That's when they started the slide into marketability-driven choices.
Re:What about the Tea Party Movement? (Score:5, Interesting)
Another group want someone else to pay thier student loans
What we want is to pay reasonable price for a reasonable service. There are two ways really to fix this problem: get education costs under control (they were NOT always this high, there is SOMETHING WRONG somewhere), or, get employers to stop demanding four year college educations for positions that clearly do not require that. If your choice is between $200k of debt and permanent unemployment, that's just a fucking crappy choice.
free healthcare
Sure, I guess you could call it "free healthcare" in the sense of "free interstate highways," i.e. I don't write a check for it, but I do pay for it through my taxes. I do not want free healthcare, I want healthcare that will be there when I need it (you know, so I don't die), and to pay a realistic price for that. Yes, that means everyone needs to pay into the system.
not willing to start at the bottom and work thier way up
That's what I did. I graduated school with about $60k of debt, which I repaid within two years by living at home and literally spending NO MONEY on ANYTHING. I got dinner and a roof over my head, other than that, I was on my own. I couldn't afford to see a movie or buy a beer. Once those two years of misery were over, then I moved out. Now it's ten years later and I'm making over $100k and the only debt I have is a mortgage (a mortgage on which I make significant overpayments). What made this possible was my mother throwing me a bone by letting me stay at home and pay off that debt. I would have been crippled by it if not. She made a sacrifice (really, the same sacrifice she'd already been making for twenty years) for me, and in exchange I became a very successful son who will be there for her when she's old. So you see, it's possible to get help from somebody even if you're "starting at the bottom."
I'm employed, married, self-reliant, and quite well off. And somehow the OWS movement resonates very strongly with me. They might be young, naive, and feel somewhat over-entitled but these are very real problems affecting millions of people. You can call them losers and parasites if you want, but I have a feeling they will not be going away for a LONG while.
Re:Teabaggers == true Amerikuhns (Score:4, Interesting)
We also find great disparity between the issues the Americans protested vs. the issues we protested. Don't think you have any solidarity here. If you were dropped off in the streets when we protest, you would not last very long.
Your issues are petty. Our issues deal with freedom, liberty and survival.
Re:What about the Tea Party Movement? (Score:5, Interesting)
OWS: We want the "rich" (anyone who makes more than we do) to pay more taxes so the government can give us free stuff! Only evil people are rich (except for the rich politicians and other rich political players on *our* side...that's *different*!)! And if we don't get what we demand despite being a voting minority, we'll use violence (*this* is what democracy looks like!!!1!!one) to achieve our goals.
OWS: We want the top 1% to stop passing laws benefitting only themselves, killing the middle class. We want the trillions of dollars of subsidies to Haliburton, Schlumberger, Corn, Oil, and such to stop. That's our inheritance you are pissing away, leaving us nothing but debt (not just student loans, but national debt).
TEA Party: We want government to stop taxing us so much and wasting so much of the taxes they take from us, and to actually start obeying the laws and the limitations on government power that's in the Constitution.
Teabaggers: We want bigger government to look over our shoulders, tell us who can marry whom, push the message of God and Jesus on the heathens in the Middle East and cut taxes to not pay for all that and the subsidies to run up a debt I'll never pay.
If you are going to make up what you like, we can play the same game.