

TIME Person of the Year 2011: The Protester - ssclafani
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101745_2102132,00.html

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mbesto
It's interesting that in the past 10 years, TIME has recognized more "groups"
(2002-Whistleblowers, 2003-American Soldier, 2005-Good Samaritans, 2006-You,
and now Protestors)[1] than actually a specific person. I think this speaks
volumes to how much power groups of individuals have been able to exert and
influence over than the individual.

The groups have spoken.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Person_of_the_Year>

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darien
As a person that works in magazines (Conde Nast), I can tell you the reason
TIme chooses groups over people on their covers is because it will increase
magazine sales (ie: people in a specific group are more likely to buy the
issue)

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michaelfeathers
When I was a boy, the Time Person of the Year was a person.

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keithwarren
Maybe they should change this from 'Person' of the year to 'politically
motivated thing we want to recognize'

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JonnieCache
They have form on this one; in 2006 it was "You," in recognition of the rise
of user generated content.

Kind of annoying that the massive 2010 student protests in the UK never get
mentioned in articles like this. Tens of thousands of them occupied their
universities for months, stormed and trashed the HQ of one of the governing
parties, and attempted to burn down the treasury offices. Running battles with
14 year olds throwing lumps of concrete at police on horseback. It was chaos.

I am by no means condoning it, just pointing out how strange it is that these
events never get mentioned in articles like this, because they predate the
arab spring/OWS and therefore don't fit the media narrative.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/2010_UK_stude...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/2010_UK_student_protests)

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nextparadigms
I think it's very rare that revolutions are not violent. This is why the
officials shouldn't get increasingly more greedy and oppressive until they
make the citizens respond like that. Because in the end it will be worse off
for them - like they could end up executed by whoever gets in charge after the
revolution.

It seems the US Government keeps ignoring its citizens, too, heavily voting in
favor of bills like SOPA or the NDAA. The OWS protesters have been mainly
peaceful, but if they keep this up, the US Government might find itself with a
_real_ violent revolution, too. It's up to them to start respecting the
Constitution again or keep violating it at every pace until the camel's back
will break.

To be honest, I really think everyone who sponsored the NDAA bill should be
immediately trialed for treason against the USA. It's such a blatant violation
of the Constitution they've sworn to uphold. Bills that effectively remove or
disable Amendments from the Constitution at the Congress' whim without
consulting the people in a referendum should be illegal.

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jgfoot
The article is useful because it repeats and glorifies this shibboleth: "So
America's great 21st century contribution to fomenting freedom abroad was not
imposing it militarily but enabling it technologically, as an epiphenomenon of
globalization. And for a second act, globalization returned the favor, turning
democratic uprisings in developing countries into inspirational exports for
the rich world."

First, the Arab Spring protests were the culmination of long-standing
movements that magazines like Time paid little attention to until the very
end. When Time finally noticed them, Time wrote about the movements as though
they were the product of American social networking sites. It always struck me
as a very USA-centric thing for an American to look at the Arab Spring and
say, "hey, look at what we did!"

Second, the Internet's impact on global freedom is ambiguous; as Evgeny
Morozov points out in The Net Delusion, the Internet can be used to promote
freedom but also can help oppressive regimes by making propaganda and
surveillance easier.

Third, whether the Arab Spring actually promoted "freedom" and democracy
remains to be seen; removing a dictator is certainly a step in the right
direction, but it isn't the whole journey.

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shadowfiend
There were some people suggesting that the Occupy movement or “the 99%” should
be the Person of the Year—I suppose this is pretty close ;)

To those who say the TIME Person of the Year should be an actual person, I
think what's happening is that sometimes there's a single person that does
extraordinary things in a given year. But sometimes, people, in numbers,
anonymous, make changes so much more radical than those a single person can,
that it's almost foolish to try and pick a single person for the year, because
any given individual's contribution to the year's changes is so very minuscule
compared to the crowds that gathered from Σύνταγμα square to Tahrir square to
Zucotti Park—some more effective than others, but all changing the way things
around them were being discussed, and all fueling each other.

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acslater00
If I organize a protest of Time's complete lack of journalistic credibility,
does that make me person of the year???

