Time Magazine has released its 2008 Person of the Year package and surprise! It’s soaring eagle Barack Obama! Personally, I’m shocked — SHOCKED — that in light of crippled duck Pres. Bush’s recent heroic dodging of hurled shoes and subsequent philosophical quandary — "So what if he threw a shoe at me?" — he’s not the Person of the Year instead. Oh look! I’m over it.
The Runners-Up pool features Henry Paulson, Zhang Yimou, Nicolas Sarkozy and his phone pal Sarah Palin, while the pop culture figures included in the group — Tina Fey, Robert Downey Jr., Stephenie Meyer, and Michael Phelps (all named Entertainers of the Year by EW as well) — are relegated to the Miss Congeniality-ish category of People Who Mattered.
Tell us: Is your Person of the Year the same as your Entertainer of the Year? And even if you’re not into Obama, doesn’t he kind of deserve Person of the Year PURELY based on his powerful reach and ability to palm a b-ball? Come on.
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President-elect Barack Obama is my person of the year too. Honorable mentions/ runners-up: Michelle Obama, Daniel Day-Lewis, Sanjay Gupta (he’s just always brilliant, whoever recently won the Nobel Prize for Physics (i think physicts are amazing always), Tim Russert (made election08 riveting and I miss him), Robert Downey Jr. and Hillary Clinton.
Obama is so face-palmingly obvious that I’m surprised they bothered to release the PotY edition this year.
Loved the cool mosaic of Obama in the Flickr section. “Out of Many, We Are One” is perfect!
Clearly it’s Obama, nobody else comes close. So if I was to pick an entertainer type Person of the Year, I’d go with Heath Ledger for single handedly turning a $300 million dollar mega hit into a $550 million+ crazy ridiculous mega hit!
I wanna throw MY shoes at Dubya!
Clearly Obama is the person of the year, but I’m going to have to agree with EW that Robert Downey Jr. is entertainer of the year. It’s my favorite comeback story ever and he’s so deserving.
Sarah Palin. maybe not yours but definitely mine and a lot of others too. i’m just not Obama-in-love and that’s okay.
****FUN FACT: Nambu, Kobayashi, and Maskawa were the Nobel prize winners in Physics for the year 2008.
please, let’s just never mention that name again. (i don’t have anything against Republicas, i actually like Huckabee and Jindal). we can even say Reagan if we want, but please not that name. the shame of a nation really.
Jackman. All the way.
I’ll vote for Slezak! 1000 votes for the spark of genius that began that awesomely fabulous, sick little series, America’s Next Top Doll.
I feel like this is such an obvious choice. I mean, Obama was rockin’ this year, but wasn’t there someone else in a different country that made some kind of anti-cancer vaccine breakthrough or stopped an impeding alien invasion? For that matter, are there people not from America in TIME’s list? Interesting…
And Entertainer is DEFINITELY different that Person. I mean, an hour of Obama talking isn’t super-interesting…but on the other hand, I would watch sixteen hours of anything Robert Downey Jr.’s ever been in. That’s not to say Obama hasn’t done a crazy-amazing job of political stuff, but he’s not entirely that entertaining.
I am my person of the year pick! If I could survive the death of my Mother, Obama being president elect, and the fall of the economy without losing my mind – I am definitely the person of the year!