Time Person of the Year
- "Man of the Year" redirects here. For films of this title, see Man of the Year (film).
Person of the Year is an annual issue of U.S. newsmagazine Time that features a profile on the man, woman, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that "for better or worse, has most influenced events in the preceding year."
History
The tradition of selecting a Man of the Year began in 1927, when Time editors contemplated what they could write about during a slow news week. Primarily, they sought to remedy an editorial embarrassment from earlier that year when the magazine did not put aviator Charles Lindbergh on its cover following his historic trans-Atlantic flight. At the end of the year, they came up with the idea of a cover story about Lindbergh being the "Man of the Year."
Since then, a person, group of people (either a team of select individuals or a demographic category), or in two special cases, an invention and the planet Earth, has been selected for a special issue at the end of every year. In 1999, the title was changed to Person of the Year in an effort to avoid sexism. However, the only women to win the renamed award so far were those in 2002 who were recognized as "The Whistleblowers" and, jointly with Bill Gates and Bono, Melinda Gates in 2005. Four women were awarded the title when it was still Man of the Year: Corazon Aquino in 1986, Queen Elizabeth II in 1952, Soong Mei-ling (Madame Chiang Kai-Shek) in 1937 and Wallis Simpson in 1936. However, women would also be included in several groups, namely "Hungarian Freedom Fighter" in 1956, U.S. scientists in 1960, "Twenty-Five and Under" in 1966, "The Middle Americans" in 1969, "American Women" in 1975, "The American Soldier" in 2003, and "You" in 2006.
Since 1927, every serving President of the United States has been a Person of the Year at least once with the exceptions of Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Gerald Ford.
The December 31, 1999, issue of Time named Albert Einstein the Person of the Century. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi were chosen as runners-up.[1]
Controversy
The title is frequently mistaken as being an honor. Many, including some members of the American media, continue to wrongly perpetuate the idea that the position of "Person of the Year" is a reward or prize, despite the magazine's frequent statements to the contrary. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that many admirable people have been given the title—perhaps the majority. Thus, journalists will frequently describe a new person of the year as having "joined the ranks" of past winners such as Martin Luther King. The fact that people such as Adolf Hitler have been granted the title as well is often less well-known.
There was a massive public backlash in the United States after Time named Ayatollah Khomeini as Man of the Year in 1979, which caused thousands of subscribers to end their subscription.[citation needed] Since then, Time has generally shied away from choosing controversial candidates. Time's Person of the Year 2001—in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks — was New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani. It was a somewhat controversial result; many thought that Giuliani was deserving, but many others[citation needed] thought that the rules of selection ("the individual or group of individuals who have had the biggest effect on the year's news") made the obvious choice Osama bin Laden. They cited previous choices such as Adolf Hitler to demonstrate that Person of the Year did not necessarily mean "best human being of the year." It is interesting to note that the issue which declared Rudolph Giuliani as Person of the Year included an article that mentioned Time's earlier decision to make Ayatollah Khomeini as Man of the Year in 1979 and the 1999 rejection of Hitler as "Person of the Century." The article seemed to imply that Osama bin Laden was a stronger candidate than Giuliani for Person of the Year and Hitler was a stronger candidate than Albert Einstein for Person of the Century, but they were not ultimately selected due to what the magazine described as their "negative" influence on history.
According to stories in respected newspapers, Time's editors anguished over the choice, reasonably fearing that selecting the al-Qaeda leader might offend readers and advertisers. Bin Laden had already appeared on its covers on October 1, November 12, and November 26. Many readers expressed dissatisfaction at the idea of seeing his face on the cover again. In the end, Giuliani's selection led some to criticize that Time had failed to uphold its own declared standards.[citation needed]
In recent years, the choices for Person of the Year have also been criticized for being too U.S.-centered, which is a departure from the original tradition of recognizing foreign political leaders and thinkers. Until Bono received the shared title in 2005, Time had gone over a decade without recognizing a non-American individual. A breakdown by nationality also shows that more than a half of the people who have ever been selected for the title have been Americans[citation needed]. Furthermore incumbent US Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter were designated Men of the Year in the years of the election that led them to the high office in the following year, without them necessarily having been influential in the meantime.
Time For Kids, targeted at grade school and junior high students, has recently begun selecting a person of the year independent of the main magazine's selection. In 2005, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was named.
Persons of the Year
- 1927: Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) (first person chosen)
- 1928: Walter Chrysler (1875–1940)
- 1929: Owen Young (1874–1962)
- 1930: Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) (first non-American and first non-white person)
- 1931: Pierre Laval (1883–1945)
- 1932: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945)
- 1933: Hugh Johnson (1882–1942)
- 1934: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) (2nd time)
- 1935: Haile Selassie I (1892–1975)
- 1936: Wallis Simpson (1896–1986) (first female chosen)
- 1937: Chiang Kai-Shek (1887–1975) and Soong May-ling (1898–2003) (first couple chosen)
- 1938: Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)
- 1939: Joseph Stalin (1878–1953)
- 1940: Winston Churchill (1874–1965)
- 1941: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) (3rd time)
- 1942: Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) (2nd time)
- 1943: George Marshall (1880–1959)
- 1944: Dwight Eisenhower (1890–1969)
- 1945: Harry Truman (1884–1972)
- 1946: James F. Byrnes (1879–1972)
- 1947: George Marshall (1880–1959) (2nd time)
- 1948: Harry Truman (1884–1972) (2nd time)
- 1949: Winston Churchill (1874–1965) (2nd time) (Man of the Half-Century)
- 1950: The American Fighting-Man (first abstract chosen)
- 1951: Mohammed Mossadegh (1882–1967)
- 1952: Queen Elizabeth II (b. 1926)
- 1953: Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967)
- 1954: John Dulles (1888–1959)
- 1955: Harlow Curtice (1893–1962)
- 1956: Hungarian Freedom Fighter
- 1957: Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971)
- 1958: Charles De Gaulle (1890–1970)
- 1959: Dwight Eisenhower (1890–1969) (2nd time)
- 1960: U.S. scientists (represented by Linus Pauling, Isidor Rabi, Edward Teller, Adam Fisher, Donald A. Glaser, Willard Libby, Robert Woodward, Charles Draper, William Shockley, Emilio Segre, John Enders, Charles Townes, George Beadle, James Van Allen and Edward Purcell)
- 1961: John F. Kennedy (1917–1963)
- 1962: Pope John XXIII (1881–1963)
- 1963: Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968)
- 1964: Lyndon Johnson (1908–1973)
- 1965: William Westmoreland (1914–2005)
- 1966: The Generation Twenty-Five and Under
- 1967: Lyndon Johnson (1908–1973) (2nd time)
- 1968: Apollo 8 Astronauts Frank Borman (b. 1928), Jim Lovell (b. 1928), William Anders (b. 1933)
- 1969: The Middle Americans
- 1970: Willy Brandt (1913–1992)
- 1971: Richard Nixon (1913–1994)
- 1972: Richard Nixon (1913–1994) (2nd time) and Henry Kissinger (b. 1923)
- 1973: John Sirica (1904–1992)
- 1974: King Faisal (1906–1975)
- 1975: American Women (represented by Betty Ford, Carla Hills, Ella Grasso, Barbara Jordan, Susie Sharp, Jill Conway, Billie Jean King, Susan Brownmiller, Addie Wyatt, Kathleen Byerly, Carol Sutton and Alison Cheek)
- 1976: Jimmy Carter (b. 1924)
- 1977: Anwar Sadat (1918–1981)
- 1978: Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997)
- 1979: Ayatollah Khomeini (1902–1989)
- 1980: Ronald Reagan (1911–2004)
- 1981: Lech Wałęsa (b. 1943)
- 1982: The Computer (first non-human abstract chosen)
- 1983: Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) (2nd time) and Yuri Andropov (1914–1984)
- 1984: Peter Ueberroth (b. 1937)
- 1985: Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) (2nd time)
- 1986: Corazón Aquino (b. 1933)
- 1987: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (b. 1931)
- 1988: Endangered Earth (Planet of the Year)
- 1989: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (b. 1931) (Man of the Decade)
- 1990: George H. W. Bush (b. 1924) (The Two George Bushes)
- 1991: Ted Turner (b. 1938)
- 1992: Bill Clinton (b. 1946)
- 1993: The Peacemakers: Nelson Mandela (b. 1918), F.W. de Klerk (b. 1936), Yasser Arafat (1929–2004), and Yitzhak Rabin (1922–1995)
- 1994: Pope John Paul II (1920–2005)
- 1995: Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)
- 1996: David Ho (b. 1952)
- 1997: Andy Grove (b. 1936)
- 1998: Bill Clinton (b. 1946) (2nd time) and Kenneth Starr (b. 1946)
- 1999: Jeffrey P. Bezos (b. 1964)
- 2000: George W. Bush (b. 1946)
- 2001: Rudolph Giuliani (b. 1944)
- 2002: The Whistleblowers: Cynthia Cooper of Worldcom (b. 1963), Sherron Watkins of Enron (b. 1959), and Coleen Rowley of the FBI (b. 1954)
- 2003: The American Soldier
- 2004: George W. Bush (b. 1946) (2nd time)
- 2005: The Good Samaritans: Bono (b. 1960), Bill Gates (b. 1955), and Melinda Gates (b. 1964)
- 2006: Chuck Norris
Trivia
The lemmas of what, according to the Oxford English Corpus, are the three most common noun lexemes in the English language are time, person and year.
References
- ^ Golden, Frederic (2000-01-03). "Person of the Century: Albert Einstein". Time.