Althouse: "Time's Person of the Year should have been the Monolith... no

December 12, 2020

"Time's Person of the Year should have been the Monolith... no — Plywood."

From the list of things I've said out loud this morning.

37 comments:

Chris N said...: My sources say the guy from Time could have shoved a smartphone up his ass, taken a picture, and put that on the cover.

The ‘Times’ they are a changin’.; 12/12/20, 7:53 AM
Ann Althouse said...: I like the idea of the person of the year being a thing... though they already did that... once. (The computer); 12/12/20, 7:56 AM
Achilles said...: Plywood made it's dry run in 2020. Kinda like the 2018 California house elections.

Plywood is fully on-boarded and rolling in 2021.; 12/12/20, 7:59 AM
Humperdink said...: Skyrocketing plywood sales used to be a sign of an impending natural disaster. Now it reflects a man-made .... er .... human-made .... er .... lefty-made disaster.; 12/12/20, 8:01 AM
Lurker21 said...: At least they did go with one inanimate object this year.

Not sure about the other.; 12/12/20, 8:09 AM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: "Prison for the Year"

... keep Kammy n Joe on the cover.

If you do the crime, then you can do TIME; 12/12/20, 8:13 AM
Rick.T. said...: “I like the idea of the person of the year being a thing...”
——————————
Unsurprising. Typical of a certain mindset.; 12/12/20, 8:22 AM
Readering said...: Potus tweeting case for govs of
GA and AZ.

Maybe twitter.; 12/12/20, 8:27 AM
Political Junkie said...: COVID; 12/12/20, 8:57 AM
Bob Boyd said...: That guy who's shoes caught on fire.; 12/12/20, 9:21 AM
J. Farmer said...: I like the idea of the person of the year being a thing... though they already did that... once. (The computer)

1982. I remember reading that issue on microfilm in my junior high school library. Roger Rosenblatt's essay, "A New World Dawns." was really sarcastic. The issue supposedly made Steve Jobs cry because he had hoped to be named Person of the Year. The issue included a profile of Jobs by Jay Cocks, "The Updated Book of Jobs," that described his paternity controversy and broke the story that his daughter and upcoming machine shared the name Lisa.

Time named Earth the Person of the Year in 1988. Depending on where people stand on the Gaia hypothesis, that may or may not qualify as a "thing."; 12/12/20, 9:50 AM
gadfly said...: Time just wanted to piss off the losers supporting president-not-elected Don Trump.

So we can expect our ex-bullshooter-in-charge to board up the White House with plywood panels and to steal the silverware. Street artists from Madison will save the day by painting beautiful "Never Trump" and "SCOTUS 9 to 0" signs on the bare plywood.; 12/12/20, 10:29 AM
Steven said...: Given that Ann was Time Person of the Year in 1966, 1969, 1975, and 2006, I think we should take her suggestions very seriously.

Plywood it is.; 12/12/20, 10:37 AM
Skeptical Voter said...: Times Man of the Year is a Dunderhead.; 12/12/20, 10:48 AM
Charlie said...: Ted Wheeler, hands down, is person of the year!; 12/12/20, 10:49 AM
Wince said...: I vote the "'Mostly Peaceful' Protester" in 2021.; 12/12/20, 10:58 AM
Jupiter said...: Plywood is over. Plywood happened. We saw the pictures. They had meaning. But the meaning is gone. Plywood is like the condom you used to bang some bimbo whose name you don't remember, dangling from the lip of the trash can by the sofa you crashed out on. You'd like to push it in, so you wouldn't see it any more. It ain't pretty. But you don't want to touch it. Even though you had no problem wrapping it around your dick when you were drunk last night.

Can't we just forget plywood? Plywood is covering someone else's windows, in someone else's town. They had some problem, they used plywood to cover it up. Let's Move On!; 12/12/20, 11:11 AM
robother said...: Time making the beast with two backs the Person of the Year 2020 is (unintentionally) appropriate. A co- Presidency is our new order, sharing power and diluting the warm piss that is the Vice Presidency by half. I dub this Person "Joe Blow" and will refer to the POTUS as such for the duration.; 12/12/20, 11:17 AM
TheThinMan said...: I believe the Time Person of the Year decision was hastily made, and the announcement was perfectly timed, to influence the Supreme Court ruling. That, along with the justices not wanting to put themselves and their families in danger for four years, sealed the deal.; 12/12/20, 11:18 AM
Narr said...: Hmmm. I couldn't wait to get to Althouse to find this out.

Don't get me wrong, I like plywood. Some of my best little projects in life have involved plywood in some way or another.

It's versatile stuff, plywood. You can make monolith-like objects with plywood, that can be easily moved about to wherever plywood monoliths might be needed. Most historical monuments, statues, etc can be covered pretty easily with plywood, at least until proper sanitary removals can be arranged.

I wonder if plywood that looks damaged and graffittied already might be a trend. Imagine the creative opportunities!

Narr
You saw it here first; 12/12/20, 11:40 AM
Dr Weevil said...: I would have thought the object of the year should be the Dominion voting machine. If even half the Twitter experts are right, it records votes as fractions, not integers, can be programmed to siphon votes from one candidate to another, and authorities in Georgia have gotten hold of one that, given 100 votes each marked for Trump and Biden, consistently reports 113 for Biden, 87 for Trump. That particular machine would be Object of the Year in a just world, or even a half-just world.

Is the story true? I suspect it is, mostly because the press has strenuously avoided mentioning it, or even admitting there is any evidence for fraud, and both the press and the courts at all levels have refused to even look at the evidence offered, other than picking away at a few carefully-selected more vulnerable arguments as if this disposed of all of them.; 12/12/20, 11:50 AM
wendybar said...: Wince said...
I vote the "'Mostly Peaceful' Protester" in 2021.

12/12/20, 10:58 AM

You mean the rioters and looters from Antifa and BLM?? yeah...they rule over us now...Ask the Supreme Court. They didn't want a riot if they overruled the corrupt....; 12/12/20, 12:05 PM
narciso said...: much like susan rosenberg and thousand currents, are rarely remarked upon, politico did in may right before the uprising,; 12/12/20, 12:17 PM
Bunkypotatohead said...: Name: Joho
Pronouns: they, their
Gender: undetermined

Plywood has more personality.; 12/12/20, 12:19 PM
Bob B said...: Actually, plywood was ahead on the selection voting day. But, when they were preparing to announce the selection the next day, they found Biden and Harris had taken the lead overnight.; 12/12/20, 12:30 PM
William said...: The Pulitzer and Nobel are well endowed and won't go out of business no matter how many bad calls they make. Middle aged people, however, will live to see the end of Time's Person of the Year. Maybe Facebook or Google will pick it up and continue the tradition of getting things wrong until the end of time even after the end of Time.....I think of all the major awards the Academy Awards deserves the prize for the most wrong headed and egregiously stupid calls.... I'd like to see the Emmys give a life time achievement award to Phil Spector. It would cheer him up in his lonely prison cell and give him something to talk about with the other inmates. The award would thus serve a useful purpose and thus would differentiate itself from all other awards given that year.; 12/12/20, 12:36 PM
Joe Smith said...: Or should it have been the spray paint?; 12/12/20, 12:47 PM
Qwinn said...: Saw plenty of plywood from the tour bus taking us into DC this morning.; 12/12/20, 1:03 PM
Not Sure said...: If we're going with non-human Persons of the Year, then isn't it obviously the Novel Coronavirus?; 12/12/20, 1:36 PM
Tina Trent said...: Plywood is a good idea. The only place I see TIME Magazine anymore is in doctor's offices, and it's as weighty as a few Kleenex. Who on earth subscribes to it?

Plywood as person pairs well with the horrific Nativity the Vatican just unveiled. I like me a good Brutalist office complex as much as the next fella, but representations of the birth of Christ are supposed to be . . . human. There's more sanctity in an episode of Dr. Who. In fact, there was always lot of unintended sanctity in Dr. Who, until they became woke about gender. Britain is more haunted than practicing, also less haunted every day. The loss is glaring.; 12/12/20, 3:23 PM
narciso said...: wow a cyberman nativity,

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/12/12/vatican-nativity-christmas-pope-francis-239486; 12/12/20, 5:05 PM
todd galle said...: I thought I was 'Person of the Year' a bit ago.; 12/12/20, 5:41 PM
The Godfather said...: The Vote Counter. That's who gives you Joe and Kamala.

(And BTW, is "Time Magazine" still a thing?); 12/12/20, 9:47 PM
Butkus51 said...: Hitler, Stalin (consecutive years)......oh and Stalin again. Some club they got there.; 12/12/20, 10:50 PM
Readering said...: Pretty script.; 12/13/20, 9:45 AM
n.n said...: A diaper covers all the transmission modes.; 12/13/20, 10:42 AM
Lurker21 said...: Person of the Year ... Person of Interest ... It's not hard to get the two confused ...; 12/13/20, 12:21 PM