"For sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively), for reshaping the rules of politics to fit his ten-gallon-hat leadership style and for persuading a majority of voters that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years, George W. Bush is TIME's 2004 Person of the Year," TIME nauseatingly announces in its Dec. 27 issue.
TIME names Bush 2004's Person of the Year
Since TIME magazine started naming a Person of the Year with American aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1927, it has named Persons of the Year for the degree of influence they have exerted on the world -- for good or for ill.
Therefore, Repugnicans who are giddy and Democrats who are despondent over George W. Bush's being named Person of the Year for 2004 should be reminded of some of TIME's past Persons of the Year:
The infamous:
 
 
Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, 1938; Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, 1939 and 1942; Iran's leader Ayatullah Khomeini, 1979
Republican presidents (with plenty of overlap into the "infamous" category above):
 
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1944 and 1959
 
Richard M. Nixon, 1971 and 1972 (with National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger)
 
Ronald Reagan, 1980 and 1983 (with Soviet politician Yuri Andropov)
 
King George I, 1990; King George II, 2000
Miscellaneous Republican asswipes (that's redundant):
 
U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, 1995; New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani, 2001 (for his supposed heroism on Sept. 11, 2001)
Democratic presidents:
 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1932, 1934 and 1941 (the only person named TIME's Person of the Year three times)
 
Harry Truman, 1945 and 1948
John F. Kennedy, 1961
 
Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964 and 1967
Jimmy Carter, 1976
 
Bill Clinton, 1992 and 1998 (with witch-hunt ringleader Kenneth Starr)
Miscellaneous heroes:
 
American aviator Charles Lindbergh, 1927; Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi, 1930
 
British prime minister and statesman Winston Churchill, 1940 and 1949
 
American general and statesman George C. Marshall, 1943 and 1947
 
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 1963; American astronauts, 1968
 
Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, 1987 and 1989
The fairer sex (underrepresented, as usual):
 
England's Queen Elizabeth II, 1952; American women, 1975
 
Philippine president Corazon Aquino, 1986; "the whistleblowers," 2002
Fucking strange picks for "Person" of the Year:
 
The computer, 1982; "endangered Earth," 1988
Last year's pick:
The American soldier, 2003
My pick for 2004's Person of the Year, rather than TIME's Americentric and U.S. president-centric choice of George W. Bush, would have been the "Iraqi freedom fighter," a la TIME's 1956 choice of the "Hungarian freedom fighter":
The Iraqi freedom fighters -- called "Iraqi insurgents" by the corporately controlled U.S. mainstream media -- consistently have upstaged whatever the fuck it is that the Bush regime has supposedly accomplished in Iraq since it illegally, immorally, unprovokedly and imperialistically invaded the sovereign oil-rich nation in March 2003.
Here's a memorable picture from today alone:
The caption for this Associated Press photo reads, "A gunman, left, shoots and kills a man lying in Baghdad's Haifa Street after being pulled from a car Sunday, Dec. 19, 2004. The man at right on his knees was executed moments later, along with another man not shown in picture. About 30 militants hurling hand grenades and firing machine guns attacked a car carrying five people employed by the [Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq's] Baghdad office and tried 'to drag them out,' said Adel al-Lami, a member of the [commission]."
While I don't agree with all of their tactics, such as beheadings and suicide and car bombings, I don't blame the Iraqi "insurgents" for protecting their nation from the American Empire, and I don't know what other means of fighting back they have in the face of the United States' military might. It never was a fair fight -- which is why the Bush regime picked it -- so you can't blame the Iraqis for fighting dirty.
Baghdad still burns one year and nine months later and George W. Bush is TIME magazine's Person of the Year.
Whatfuckingever.
A complete list of TIME's Persons of the Year from 1927 to 2003 is here.
3:25:46 PM 
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