So Facebook
founder Mark Zuckerberg is Time’s Person of the Year.
The choice is controversial, and as a big non-fan of the privacy-invading
phenomenon that is Facebook, I certainly wouldn’t have had him on my list.
However,
being named Person of the Year by Time doesn’t always mean you’re destined for
sainthood. A brief review of some of the previous winners is instructive (note:
the awards used to be known as “Man of the Year”).
The
inaugural winner was Charles Lindbergh, in 1927. Lindbergh was a great flier, but
he was also an anti-Semite who appears to have harboured sympathies towards the
Nazis (If you get a chance you should read Philip Roth’s The Plot Against
America, an alternate history story where Lindbergh becomes President in 1940).
The winner
in 1931 was Pierre Laval. Followers of
20th century French history will know him best as a Vichy collaborator
who was executed in 1945 for treason.
And in 1938
Adolf Hitler himself was Time’s Man of the Year. Then in 1939 it was the turn
of that other monster of the 20th century, Joseph Stalin. Way to go,
Time. To prove they couldn’t get enough of
Uncle Joe they gave it to him again, in 1942.
Mohammed Mossadegh,
the winner in 1951, was an Iranian Prime Minister so beloved of the US that they
overthrew him in a CIA-organised coup two years later.
In 1965 the
winner was William Westmoreland, the US general who commanded in Vietnam and
who failed utterly to understand the nature of the war he needed to fight for
the US to achieve its objectives. Cue a humiliating defeat and withdrawal.
Richard
Nixon of Watergate fame won in 1971 and 1972. But he had to share in 1972 with
Henry Kissinger, a man who many have labelled a war criminal.
In 1979 the
Ayatollah Khomeini was the winner. That probably didn’t go down well with the
US public when, some months later, he decided to hold 66 US citizens hostage.
In 1983 one
of those short-lived Russian leaders of the early ‘80s, Yuri Andropov took the
award. For what? Not being Brezhnev? Perhaps
being one of the main forces behind the crushing of the Hungarian and Prague
uprisings was what swayed the judges.
In the
1990s and early 2000s it was the Bushes (Daddy in 1990 and Dubya in 2000 and
2004).
In 1998
they clearly decided it was time to lighten the mood. The choice of both Bill
Clinton and his nemesis Kenneth Star in 1998 must have had people rolling in
the aisles.
Authoritarian
Vlad Putin got the award in 2007, and last year it was Ben Bernanke, Chairman
of the US Federal Reserve during the Global Financial Crisis. Yes, that’s
right, they gave him an award for his efforts. Mind you, the US gave billions
to the Wall Street bankers who caused the mess, so I guess it’s consistent with
rewarding, rather than horsewhipping, those who messed up the global financial
system.
So the fact
that Zuckerberg has won may not bode well for him or for the rest of us. If
history is any judge it seems he will likely use his billions to enter into
politics and become an authoritarian ruler, killing millions of people around the
world before dying in a bunker surrounded by his loyal followers.
Still think
Facebook is harmless?
Time have tried to point out in the past that it's a question of infuence on world affairs rather than supreme human achievement and doesn't imply a value judgment.
ReplyDeleteI heard that when they were explaining how they almost gave the 2001 one to Osamam Bin Laden. The way they caved then, and followed it up with a bunch of silly ones, suggest they don't really know either.
At least it wasn't Lady Gaga.
ReplyDelete