Time magazine recently awarded its vaunted Person of the Year title to “The Protestor.”

The increasingly irrelevant weekly has been moving away from traditional designations of actual, individual human beings as Person of the Year for a while now.  Apparently the left-leaning journal has been ever more swayed by the collectivist notion that there are no individual heroes or titans that drive the world—just influences, movements, and groundswells.  Recent winners of Time’s award have consisted of The Peacemakers (including founder of modern terrorism Yasser Arafat), The Whistleblowers (including an Enron staffer who warned about bad accounting practices), and The Good Samaritans (including certified bobblehead Bono).

At least those titles went to groups of several persons each.  Time’s latest choice encompasses literally millions of human beings.  It’s as vague and vacuous as the phrase “War on Poverty.”

(I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised at Time’s latest addle-headed selection; this is the same magazine that chose Vladimir Putin as Person of the Year in 2007 and, um, “You” in 2006.)

Throughout its lengthy cover story, Time boosts “protesting” as if it were just another Internet craze, like planking, owling, or Batmanning.  read more »