With Time magazine set to announce its Person of the Year this week, we asked Yahoo! Voices contributors for their picks.
COMMENTARY | As Time prepares to announce its 2011 Person of the Year honoree, I began to seriously reflect on the year, events that had the greatest impact on the world, and situations that most influenced society in 2011.
For me, a Person of the Year doesn’t necessarily mean one particular individual or his/her contributions. It’s the title of an award. Period. 2011 was an amazing year for news, to say the very least. Of the 34 nominees, this is my choice for Person of the Year in 2011.
My Choice
My choice for Person of the Year is the movement in the Middle East by the young protesters. This tenacious group of determined individuals resisted tanks, gunfire and persecution to change countless years of iron-fisted totalitarian rule. Thousands of young Arab protesters throughout the Middle East literally changed the way millions of people will live for years to come. If that is not an influential group, one that has impacted many and changed society as a whole, then Time’s editors are as pig-headed as some of their fruitless nominees.
Co-honorees?
There are major wars being fought for various reasons around the world, poverty is on the upswing due to a global greed and recession, and political unrest is on the evening news nightly.
This year has also provided some strange weather incidents as well. There have been numerous natural disasters involving great loss of life and utter destruction, so why not award the Person of the Year honors to the rescue efforts in Japan from the March 2011 tsunami and earthquakes?
Many suggest emergency workers are often faceless heroes. Some liken them to drones, workers just performing a task. While I do subscribe to that theory to some degree, I also believe there are valid reasons to argue for the heroes that entered the nuclear power plant and for those assisting in the initial recovery efforts in general as danger still lurked beneath the ground.
The threat of aftershocks very likely prohibited some recovery efforts initially, but regardless, the relief workers and the Fukushima 50 in Japan should share Time magazine’s Person of the Year award with the Arab youth protesters.
Read more from Giovanni Badalamenti:
“A History of CEOs in Politics”
“World Health Organization Unlikely to Get People off the Phone”
Sources:
TIME, “TIME’s Person of the Year 2011 Poll: Choose Your Candidate”
Science Daily, “‘Double tsunami’ doubled Japan destruction”