This morning dooce (aka Heather Armstrong) recounted her recent trip to NYC to appear on CNN. The network sought the bloggers' opinions on who they would choose to be Time Magazine's Person of the Year.
dooce asked her readers to weigh in with their ideas for the person most deserving of that title, and what they would have worn if they'd been appearing on tv.
So I want to know:
- who do you like for Person of the Year, and
- what are you wearing right now?
Mine: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales; a leather corset.
26 comments:
My Person of the Year: George W. Bush
Reasons (yes, there are two):
1. It was Bush who made the Democratic sweep of the House and Senate possible.
2. It is thanks to Bush that we’re the cusp of a Honeymoon Phase in international relations.
My garb: standard corporate monkey suit.
again?
That honeymoon link reminds me that I once compared the US electorate to a battered spouse who couldn't leave their abuser. I think that was in Nov. 2004.
So that's two of us in work attire. I wonder who's in pajamas?
person of the year? i dunno.
what i'm wearing right now: 10 year old comfy cords, cotton t-shirt (free! from the company that makes my cigarettes), flannel shirt, contact lenses, a watch, a ring and fuzzy fleece-lined sheepskin slippers.
No contest: Stephen Colbert.
End of discussion. (And I mean that.)
twiff: mmm - I love an indecisive man in flannel.
swit: a number of dooce readers picked Colbert, and I love it when you try to top me. C'mere, little puppy - I won't hurt you.
Top you? Me? What color is the sky in your world?
And I forgot: t-shirt, cords, birks, and a green zip-up sweatshirt with a peace sign on the back. But I still hate hippies.
(Also, kyu always wins the poetry stuff so I may not even bother with any entries. But I do enjoy them so. Good timing.)
swit: I really enjoy your forays into poetry, and it's not about winning - it's about playing.
And I know - you're not really a hippy, you just play one on the web. But please reassure me that you're not wearing a patchouli-scented cologne.
2006: A banner year for mediocrity.
[sigh...] People standing up to bullies or bucking the system are always good choices. And this year's crop is - who? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Kim Jong Il? If we're going to define greatness by people standing up to an international bully, it would be nice to choose someone who showed a little class in the way they did it.
So, the best I can come up with is Hugo Chavez.
This question was surprisingly depressing. I'd relish a better nominee than the crop I could come up with. [Confession - I cheated - but only out of desperation for a viable nominee.] As much as I love Colbert, I can't really see him as person of the year. Gary Trudeau?
So - somebody help me out of the doldrums, will ya'? Were there any standout heroes this year?
Oh - 2 things. I didn't follow your original link, so didn't realize I'd googled up the same one.
And, gray sweats, a white t-shirt, and sandals. It's laundry day.
I like Chavez and his attempts to pull countries in SA into some kind of defiant alliance.
And yes: I posted on the Fray. Bad Dawn.
It's all Ender's fault.
Sigh...
[pulling on my rubberwear, grabbing the restraints, and snatching the flogger off the wall...]
Wow Dawn, that's your work attire?
I'm in disheveled work attire in the hotel bar, debating this or television before the shitty night's sleep. (This, easy.)
K (uh, resume attached)
TK: do you suppose that when august said he hoped it wasn't enough to push me off the bandwagon, he really meant the waterwagon? I thought he was wondering if the lack of response to my request would discourage me.
Well, I haven't been "on the wagon," exactly - more like the methadone-maintenance program, with some chipping.
Shit.
Back to our pact, then. No more cheating.
Person of the year: Michel Gondry
Green cotton long sleeve shirt, brown trowsers that mrs. august claims are too nice for sitting around the house. Dark socks. My cat thinks that I should be wearing it.
Keifus: Nice of you to think of us when you're away from home. If you want to work in the dungeon, you'll need to learn to follow directions better than that. Of course, I suppose that depends on what position you're applying for.
swits: don't mind me. i've not been up for writing poetry lately. just not angry enough anymore. i mean, really now, have you seen my poems of late? "'tis krishna who deletes us"? camembert? geez louise.
august: curious: I've seen (and loved) Eternal Sunshine, but not the Science of Sleep. What makes Gondry's work so influential that he might deserve PotY?
I've got one of those cats. He's hard on the latex.
...and I love a man in nice trousers.
I meant that it had caused you to post post-bang.
Colbert works for me. I'm not sure I even credit Bush with fucking up. Cheney, Delay, and Foley can share.
I was trying to think of the person who anticipated a lot of what I thought were the main cultural trends of the year. Colbert might be better -- but I was thinking IPod, youtube, various kinds of talking heads and video looping, blogging (written, audio, video).
I thought of Marcos, Steve Jobs, various bloggers, John Stewart, Borat, Amy Sedaris.
The thing is, they all make me a little queasy (although I do love John Stewart).
Gondry is the only one who seemed to me to really show how all the noise could be beautiful.
It was an esoteric choice, to be sure. But I meant it.
My other candidates were IPod and Tom Armstrong of MySpace fame, but he has a less-visible co-founder.
I chose Jimmy Wales because he's made great strides toward realizing his vision: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."
On top of this, the wiki model is catching on at stunning rate, changing the way we exchange information, and Wales did it all after making his fortune in currency speculation and on-line porn brokering (Wikipedia is a non-profit).
I'm thinking "post post-bang" (PPB) ought to be filed in the fray lexicon.
PPB: a transitional event between cyber-abstinence and a 22-hour posting session.
not so much indecisive as inattentive.
Okay, so it wasn't Jimmy Wales, but I'm going to claim some bragging rights, anyway, because the first site mentioned is Wikipedia.
I think I get to claim braggin' rights, since this was the ultimate cop-out selection, with a side of pandering.
I was way off on my Sportsman of the Year prediction, though.
Then again, I suppose I do have to congratulate you on being named Person of the Year yourself.
And congrats to you also, John.
I really don't deserve it, though. Many people made greater sacrifices, breaking trail so that I could blog in comfort. Remember the defeat of the MAI? Those folks only had email. Imagine! While I did fire off a couple of emails to Amazon, Chapters and Harper Collins the night before they cancelled the publication of OJ's psuedo-confession, I doubt my threat to boycott their companies came in time to weigh into their decision.
Although there seems to be increasing confidence in the web as a political tool for the massses, my dozen or so letters to editors of various US dailies seemed to do nothing to sway US voters in 2004 (perhaps if I'd had a blog, then, things might have been different). So I hardly rate next to those loopy folks over at DailyKos, who apparently had something to do with some candidates getting elected (I stopped by there yesterday, and they were celebrating in their usual fashion).
Despite its recent success, the hive mind has its detractors (see the mild rebuttal by Jimmy Wales in the comments). What would a new movement be without those? I do like the Wiki mission of putting the information into everyone's hands (even slightly wrong or over-simplified information will level the playing field).
All we need now is a religion. I have some ideas about that. Anyone interested in the business plan can email me.
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