Time magazine has once again failed to find any one person that it can name "Person of the Year." So it decides to cop out and name everyone the person of the year. From the results, you can tell that the editors feel a general disdain for what they must increasingly believe to be a public of dummies.

When Time chose YOU as the Person of the Year, the editors developed an alibi for the decision. They said it was because of all the cool things happening on the Net. Cool things such as, uh, YouTube and MySpace? Cripes!

What I found telling about this cop-out selection was the Time Web site itself linked here. At the top of the article they show a series of photos which have nothing to do with anything technological, but instead depict a series of apparent (in the mind's eye of Time editors) stereotypes of people who represent this universal "YOU!"

Let's look at these pictures and muse over the symbolism: Guy with a red punk Mohawk haircut holding a guitar. Even the model posing for this shot must have known that it's 2006, not 1982. This is sheer mockery.

Girl listening to a vinyl record—again mockery. Would this woman even know how to play a vinyl record?

Girl (guy?) with huge Rastafarian hairdo. What's the point of this picture?

Dork playing air guitar. Let's insult American youth by showing this clown.

Soldier looking glum—gratuitous.

Black ersatz blues singer. Blue hat, blue walls, blue shirt—hey, we get it, already! Yes, that's what black folks do, sing the blues. Where are the Latinos, meanwhile?

Dipstick chick taking a pic of herself. An ode to vanity and MySpace, and another insult to youth.

Cheerleader. Please!

Studious Chinese kid at the computer. Oh, the only serious image of anyone youthful is an Asian kid at the computer. He's apparently your next boss.

Old lady in chair knitting. Hey! How come no old man is represented in these pics? From the look of this old lady, he's buried in the cellar.

Slacker scratching his head baffled. The final insult to youth shows some befuddled and obvious slacker wondering where he left his beer. Unbelievable.

So there is a subtext to the person of the year, and it's not about computers or YouTube or user-generated content. The subtext is that YOU—the Person of the Year—are apparently an idiot.

It makes sense. In fact, that's why the editors could not come up with a real person of the year. You idiots wouldn't understand why he/she was chosen and probably would have never heard of the person anyway. So let's give the award to YOU—the idiots. From my editor's eye I see this subtext all over this article, and these pictures just prove it.

And from the perspective of an office in the Time-Life building, how could they not see that MySpace is a joke—institutionalized vanity pages engineered by design to look as crappy as possible. These pages apparently come preloaded with tasteless animated GIFs, and they scroll down to China filled with the most banal and mundane drivel imaginable. If I thought this represented anything other than silliness, I'd take bets that the next generation of kids would vote Hello Kitty in as the next President. This is the sort of "user-generated" content that must have had the Time editors retching out the windows.

In disgust, they threw up their arms and named YOU the Person of the Year to see if you would notice that it was actually an insult. I noticed. And I'd like an apology.

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