Person of the Year

I’m surprised they chose Bernanke over Geithner. The latter has certainly been in the news more.

Barack Obama should have won it, of course.

And he should have won the Heisman, too.

Ron Paul!

Carrie Prejean!

Tiger Woods, of course, for lightening the mood of the whole country at a time of financial distress, and for the encouragement he has given to all the tellers of jokes, and for his sterling example of being a loving husband and father.

“At least it isn’t Barack Obama for the umpteenth time.” Umpteenth? You spell that word funny. I spell it: second.

The Tea Party people

Bernie Madoff. Not because he did anything good – but that is not what POTY is for, necessarily.

Because he personifies the greed and corruption that caused this crisis.

(Admittedly, there are many other candidates for this role, but he is the first one that came to mind…)

According to the supposed conventions of this recognition, I would’ve thought that H1N1 would have qualified as at least a runner-up. But then, I think that any article about the “Virus of the Year” would have to acknowledge the ridiculous amount of hype the media created on that topic. For obvious reasons, the media tends not to engage in such reflection.

I’m not sure Bernanke was the person who best exemplifies the economic news that dominated this year, but I do agree that the economy was the story of the year, for better or worse.

Bernanke, the Counterfeiter in Chief. The mainstream media are such lackeys. I wonder if they’ll stand by that choice when their cover price for an issue of Time (if it still exists) will be in the billions of dollars like in Zimbabwe. What a farce!

I’d go for Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Representative, who has put together a Roadmap for America that is fiscally realistic and solves such problems as Social Security and Health Care, while resisting the sentimental totalitarian solutions of the Left. This fellow has the sort of level-headed vision and confidence that our country desperately needs.

I vote for Elin Nordegren, who put the nation’s adulterers on notice that the spurned wives of the world were paying attention when Dick Armey made his famous comments in the aftermath of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Peter – I agree with your sentiment – if only the rest of the country was paying attention to his efforts and reading his road map.

One of my friends has really good ideas about how things should be, and nobody listens to him, either. Maybe he should be considered for this recognition, as well.

Or perhaps the “Person of the Year” is about something different.

The person of the year clearly should be Obama, whether you hate him or love him. My understanding of the main criterion for the award is the person who has had the greatest impact on the world. That person is certainly Obama. Obama may be sending us to hell in a handbasket, but he has had more impact on the world by far than anyone else this year (a U.S. president tends have a lot of impact no matter what, especially in the first year of his first term). However, Bernanke is not a bad choice if you just want to escape from Obamaworld. When the world experiences financial turmoil of the magnitude we have over the past year, the actions of any Fed chair, good and bad, are bound to be consequential.

I think I would have picked the US Unemployed Worker.

One thing is for sure Bernanke is probably the most powerful. After all, who else can print trillions of dollars out of nothing.?

Gene Edward Veith. And I don’t even need a better grade this semester!