13 December 2001

Is it right to mark Time for a terrorist?

Time magazine faces a difficult choice for its Person of the Year, writes Eric Ellis

THE process is almost as arcane as a Papal election. In an eyrie high above Manhattan, a brace of editors from the world's most widely read news magazine have entered a near-holy conclave to decide Time magazine's Person of the Year.
While the puffs of white smoke are more likely from good cigars, the choice of these learned media Brahmin is frequently provocative - and never more so than this 74th year of the award, to be announced next week.
If the decision was based on newsworthiness alone, as Time maintains it is, it seems clear-cut: Osama bin Laden.
But awarding this most iconic of American gongs to bin Laden might also threaten Time's franchise, such is the revulsion felt by its middle-American readers towards the man another contender, President George W. Bush, calls "The Evil One".
"If Time is considering Osama bin Laden as Man of the Year," reader Marcia Morris of Auburn, California, wrote in a letter to Time, "I am appalled.
"Beast of the Year would be more appropriate! I will cancel my subscription to Time if he is chosen."
That's a view to make bean counters cringe. But it's a view not restricted to readers. A Time reporter was quoted as saying bin Laden should be named "Motherf..ker of The Year". "To call bin Laden Person of the Year devalues the word person," he said.
The only credible alternative to bin Laden is President Bush. But he was "POY" last year after that botched presidential poll. And Time has never selected the same single person two years in succession. (Richard Nixon was Man of the Year in 1971 and 1972, the latter shared with Henry Kissinger.) Besides, Bush wouldn't even be a contender were it not for bin Laden. Dubya wasn't exactly wowing them before September 11.
But again Nixon throws up a precedent for Bush, and Time. The 1973 Man of the Year was John Sirica, the judge who sealed Nixon's Watergate fate. Sirica arguably would not have been chosen were it not for Nixon's sleaze, but three in a row for Nixon would've been unprecedented particularly when a better news argument could have been mounted the following year when the disgraced Nixon resigned. (1974 was Saudi Arabia's King Faisal, a nod to the oil crisis.) Time has chosen "monsters" before: Hitler, Stalin (twice, both times while a US ally) and the Ayatollah Khomeini. But none of them killed Americans at home. And Bush's War on Terror is not yet won.
All other significant contenders this year spring from September 11: New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, New York City's emergency workers and, pushing it, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Time faced a similar debate last year when deciding who was Person of the Century, by implication the person who did most to shape it. Smart money was on Hitler but that didn't please Jewish interests. Time chose Albert Einstein.
Time may opt for a less provocative option: Harry Potter, about whom an eloquent but disappointing argument could made about kids reading in a computer age.
That would please the bean counters. The new movie Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone could outstrip Titanic as Tinseltown's biggest money-spinner. It was made by Warner Bros, Time's sister company.
Knowing something of the process, my prediction is for none of these. I think Time will choose something safe and sentimental, such as The American People, honouring their stoicism through terror, anthrax and war. That way everyone's a winner.
Eric Ellis is a former correspondent for Time in Asia and writes for Time's sister publication, Fortune.