Update:
TIME has selected German Chancellor Angela Merkel — “Chancellor of the Free World” — as its 2015 Person of the Year.
The magazine bestowed the title on the 61-year-old world leader for the way she managed the economic crisis over the summer, and the way she’s currently handling the refugee crisis and terrorism threat looming over Europe.
.
“In a year where world leaders were tested all through the year, no one was tested the way she was, over and over again,” Gibbs told Savannah Guthrie. “The threat to European peace and security really fell to her.”
.
“She has stepped up in a way that was uncharacteristic even for her,” Gibbs said. “She’s been a very long-serving leader, the longest-serving in the west. She controls the world’s fourth largest economy, but this year she really was tested in how she would respond to some of the most difficult challenges that any leader is facing in the world.”
.
Merkel is the first individual woman to receive the “Person of the Year” recognition since TIME changed its title from “Man of the Year” in 1999. Women, however, have been recognized as part of a group, such as last year’s winner, “Ebola Fighters.”
Excellent choice!
GOP frontrunner Donald Trump came in third.
More on the selection later.
Personal Note: Although no one took me up on my bet, I would have been very glad to lose this bet. Very happy to contribute my potential $50 loss to TMV.
Please read here TIME’s write up on Merkel and the selection.
Additional Update:
What’s Trump’s (predictable) response?
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says on Twitter that Time magazine chose “person who is ruining Germany,” Chancellor Angela Merkel, as Person of the Year.
• “I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite,” Trump says
Original Post:
America, the world, is holding its collective breath in anticipation of whom TIME magazine will name as its 2015 Person of the Year, especially since Republican presidential wannabe Donald Trump has made it to the shortlist.
On that list, Trump finds himself in the august company of final contenders such as ISIL terror leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, Iran’s despot Hassan Rouhani and Russia’s thug Vladimir Putin.
TIME includes in Trump’s claim to fame his “populist rhetoric.” Translation: fear mongering, xenophobia, bigotry and misogyny.
TIME’s criterion for selecting its Person of the Year is “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year.”
Obviously, in the case of the mogul, TIME is focusing on the “for ill” part of the criterion — fair enough.
Answering questions about how the choice for Person of the Year is made, TIME’s Deputy Managing Editor Radhika Jones explained last year, “a lot of people who make bad news are very powerful people. TIME’s editors aren’t immune to that reality. Famously, they named Hitler in 1938 and Stalin in 1939 and again in 1942. These were men who had a huge impact, not just in those years but over the entire century. It’s easy to stand by those choices, looking back. Arguably you could do a bad guy every year and be justified.”
TIME is right, Trump is having a YUGE impact on the GOP presidential races — mostly “for ill,” even the GOP will argue. Let us pray, however, that such a YUGE impact will not last “over the entire century” or even into the general elections.
Other TIME Persons of the Year who have had a YUGE “for ill” impact on the world have been, in addition to the aforementioned dynamic duo, Ayatollah Khomeini, Vladimir Putin (up for a repeat honor this year) and Nikita Khrushchev.
Perhaps setting a precedent for this year’s Thing Person of the Year selection is TIME’s selection of an inanimate object — the personal computer — as its 1982 “Thing of the Year.”
Donald Trump, as much as he would love to be TIME’s Person of the Year, is in an almost no-win position.
Recently he told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the news media is glamorizing terrorists: “I think the press is making it — they’re making — they’re glamorizing these people…These people are animals. These people are not masterminds. They’re not even smart people. I will bet you they have very low I.Q.s. I mean, they’re not smart people.”
Should TIME select a contender such as Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi as its 2015 Person of the Year, Trump will indeed have a case for making such such accusations.
Should Trump himself be the honoree, TIME may have glamorized a fear monger, a xenophobe, a bigot, a misogynist — and an “immigrant-bashing carnival barker.”
We’ll know tomorrow.
Lead image: Courtesy DonkeyHotey/Flickr
Angela Merkel’s photo: 360b / Shutterstock.com
