Astroturf

That was the first word that popped into my mind when I first saw this picture. If you can’t catch my drift, google the urban dictionary definition of the word.

When did Time magazine become a joke? I remember, in the 70s as a kid, eagerly waiting for the weekly issue to arrive in our family mailbox, and I would read it cover to cover. Now, since at least 2000 I suppose, everything is partisan. Newsweek’s gone under (or was going under, last I heard and last I paid attention to it, a few years back), and Time has surpassed partisanship and slid full force into goofy self-parody land.

Time’s Man of the Year was once a respectable honorary. But when did that slide into irrelevancy? It was supposed to denote the figure in the news who, for better or worse, influenced the world the greatest in that year. In my lifetime Reagan graced the cover, as did Soviet dictators Andropov and Gorbachev. Heck, even “the computer,” a silly but accurate choice for 1982, represented not a man but a thing that influenced the world the greatest that year. I think it must have been 1988, when the editors tried to be cute again, and hailed “The Endangered Earth” as planet of the year that the title became obsolete.

Oh well. Rest in Peace, Time Man of the Year. Join such irrelevancies as the Nobel Peace Prize and the Academy Award for Best Picture.

EDIT: While speaking with my wife this morning about this post, she managed to sum it up succinctly in a way which I wish I had: “Time’s Man of the Year is really the Liberal Hero of the Year.” I heartily agreed, and added, “If the Time editorial board had an ounce of intellectual honesty they’d have to have named Trump – and I’m no fan of Trump – Man of the Year every year since 2015.” But as both the Mrs. and me have pointed out, in our direct and indirect ways, that old school definition of “Man of the Year” no longer exists, and hasn’t since some point in the mid-80s.