Criticism
The choice was criticized for being a short-sighted gimmick which ignored other newsmakers of the year. Pundit Paul Kedrosky called it an "incredible cop-out," and speculated that the selection marked "some sort of near-term market top for user-generated content." Kevin Friedl noted the award and cover design recalled the mirror viewed by the protagonist, the Dude, of The Big Lebowski, via which the viewer's reflection was framed as Time's "Man of the Year."
Additionally, the decision raised some criticism as it was described as ideological and even hypocritical. Some weeks before the announcement, Time decided to ask the users in a poll "Who Should Be Person of the Year?" After several weeks, the poll winner by a wide margin was Hugo Chávez, with 35% of the votes. The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came in second. Yet Time decided to ignore those results and did not mention them in the announcement of the Person of the Year. Its critics underline that Time ignores its digital democracy among its readers. Time supporters argue that an online poll is not representative as it has no scientific value. Thus, such a decision should not be based on it. The hyperlink to the online poll results has been removed. In addition, Peter Sagal said on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! that if "we" truly controlled the media, "we would have picked a much better choice for the Person of the Year issue."
Read more about this topic: You (Time Person Of The Year)
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)