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:
“Homoeopathy is insignificant as an art of healing, but of great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)