Written by James and Jean Anton   

Aspects of selecting the Man/Woman/Person/Whatever of the Year 2010 are a given: You gotta be famous. You gotta have a lot of money. And you gotta be good looking.

For example, the BOSTON GLOBE selected Senator Scott Brown as Bostonian of the Year. “He’s an agreeable guy with the handsome face of a star,” and the editors of the Globe LOVE the fact that he throws “members of the intellectual class” (Are they creating a new category in class warfare?) into “fits of APOPLEXY.”
They also celebrated his wonderful family, saying that he has an accomplished daughter – who incredibly was, get this... an American Idol CONTESTANT.
And they LOVE his car.
Wow!
They conclude that if you put aside politics (they didn’t want to bore people with his voting record), there is something positively “aspirational” (yes, that’s a word) about Brown’s story.
What is his greatest achievement in his first year in office? He managed to avoid making any “major” mistakes.

TIME MAGAZINE picked Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook as Person of the Year 2010 (“Person” as opposed to “Animal” or Plant of the Year.) That is to say, they can but won’t call Zuckerberg, MAN of the Year, because they still consider it politically incorrect to say that a man (for lack of a better word) won their prize.
Time’s have changed but Time hasn’t.

Zuckerberg’s principle accomplishment is that his NET WORTH is 6.9 BILLION (slightly ahead of Steve Jobs).

How did he do it? Not by creating something worthwhile (like a toaster that actually works) but by “giving people what they want.”
For Time you don’t have to accomplish much to make Person of the Year.
If you make a lot of money, their hearts go pitter-patter. You are the epitome of Time’s vision of the American dream... to make loads of money as quickly as possible, as early in life as possible.
Time is money.

Not to be outdone, PEOPLE MAGAZINE named Sandra Bullock Woman of the Year. (At least they weren’t afraid to say she’s a woman. She’s a woman and they were proud to proclaim it. And WHAT A WOMAN!)
Her accomplishment: She got divorced.
But they explain that hers was a “rough” divorce.
A rough divorce? The USA has the highest divorce rate in the world. The editors of People magazine must assume that, unlike Bullock, most people enjoy the divorce experience.

To be honest, compared to the runners up at People magazine, Bullock’s selection should not be belittled. Several other accomplished people were on the table such as:
Kate Middleton and Prince William because... they GOT ENGAGED.
Elin Nordegrin because she... DIVORCED TIGER WOODS.
Bret Michaels for having... a BRAIN HEMORRHAGE.

Enough said.
Everyone is entitled to pick a so-and-so of the year. Why not try something different like: QUESTION OF THE YEAR? There must be some mind-boggling ones out there, like the ones being asked about Barack Obama, who was Time’s Person of the Year 2008.

There seem to be two Obamas. One before the election, another after.
Before his election, he said that he would “close Guantanamo ... restore habeas corpus ... and end the Bush policy of subjecting prisoners of war to rendition.” He also promised to “Just Say No to warrantless wiretaps.”

He said he was out to “change the culture of the nation ... to break the fever of fear that has been exploited by this (the Bush) administration.” He said he would “bring back the rule of law.” That we would lead the world by “example,” not by creating “oppressive laws.”
He said that these changes would restore “America’s moral position in the world.”
He wrote The Audacity of Hope, Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream... Ahhh… Do you remember how our hearts went pitter-patter?

Then he got elected.

He commenced building the world’s biggest electronic SPY NETWORK. It spends 99% of its time and a lot of money silently spying on the American people. He now fights against (and won) the battle to deprive terrorist suspects of HABEAS CORPUS. He’s no longer worried about closing GUANTANAMO. He has fought for the right to hold prisoners INDEFINITELY (that means forever without the chance of parole) without ever getting even one chance to prove their innocence. Or to appeal to the RULE OF LAW.
He also has vastly increased the use of RENDITION (or outsourcing torture).

DRONES are attacking Pakistan and Yemen, countries with which we are not at war. He has ESCALATED the war in Afghanistan resulting in the slaughter of thousands of innocent men, women and children. He continues to send prisoners of war to third-party concentration camps (he says they are not real soldiers, so calls them “detainees”). The “detainees” have no recourse to a lawyer or to Habeas Corpus or to the protections of the Geneva Convention.
So much for restoring America’s moral position in the world. So much for leading by example. So much for the Audacity of Hope.
Didn’t you think that he was at least going to change SOMETHING!

Which leads to the Runner-Up Question of the Year:
What happened to Obama once he got elected?
Which leads to The Question of the Year:
Why isn’t the mainstream media asking Obama the Runner-Up Question of the Year?

By James and Jean Anton