Liberty's Blog

Person of the Year

In their annual announcement Time Magazine declared their Man of the Year.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The richest man in the world, Bill Gates, and his wife, Melinda, were named Time magazine's "Persons of the Year" along with Irish rocker Bono for being "Good Samaritans" who made a difference in different ways.

"For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are Time's Persons of the Year," the magazine said in its December 19 issue, made public on Sunday.

Managing Editor James Kelly said the three had been chosen as the people most effective at finding ways to eradicate such calamities as malaria in Africa, HIV and AIDS and the grinding poverty that kills 8 million people a year.

Time in the past has not always selected the nicest of peope, but the people that have affected us and created the most interest. In other words the most newsworthy. Bono's and Gates' efforts certainly deserve notice, their efforts have been very humanatarian efforts. They not only have been effective in bringing money effectively to where its been needed but they have brought attention big problems in Africa.

Yet, African health disastors have not been the topic of water cooler discussions. Most of us are a little indifferent to what doesn't directly affect us, we don't relate to what is going on over there.

Time also named former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton as "Partners of the Year" for their humanitarian efforts after the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, and the unlikely friendship that developed from that work.

"Natural disasters are terrible things, but what defines us is not what happens to us, but how we react to it," Kelly said.

I think most of us do relate to the disasters of this year. Some of us were directly affected, many more of us indirectly affected. Hurricane victims were relocated all over the country, Evacuations effected millions of people while others had to help accomodate them. Earthquakes devistated parts of Pakistan, and many of us stood mesmorized by the destruction of the SouthEast Asian Tsunnamis.

In this spirit I declare the first Annual Liberty's Person of the Year.

Mother Nature, I think she is a more approriate symbol for 2005, and certainly she has caught the attention of most of us this year. I just pray that she is kinder to to us in 2006.

Update:
Michelle Malkin finds that Time's choice was lame.

posted by Liberty @ 9:56 AM