Garcia Media Life

Really? Ben Bernanke? Time magazine Person of the Year? Because he helped save our economy? Because he did it all by his lonesome self? You really consider the economy saved? Borrrrring…

There were so many other interesting choices. Keep in mind, Time’s Person of the Year is not necessarily the Greatest & Best Person of the Year. There are plenty of people who have made the list in years past out of notoriety. Here were some other possibilities (not in any particular order):

1) Sarah Palin: Love her or hate her, the woman is a presence on the national scene. There aren’t too many politicians I can think of who could have quit their job as Governor and ended up MORE influential. Whoever is handling her these days is doing a masterful job of weaving her carefully calculated frontier-woman image into the digital age. She has over a million followers on Facebook. She blogs, she tweets, she has her name on Op-ed pieces- she’s friggin’ everywhere. True, Elmer Fudd has a better chance of getting elected to national office, but the woman whose detractors call “Caribou Barbie” is having quite an impact.

2) Tiger Woods: Again, this isn’t Saint of the Year, it’s Person of the Year. I can’t think of a bigger, more embarrassing, more spectacular fall from grace in a long, long time. There are so many teaching moments here; so many lessons to be learned on so many levels. The man and his spectacular ego, selfishness and self-destructiveness have eclipsed global warming, health care and the recession in just a matter of weeks.

3) Mullah Omar: The head of the Taliban in Afghanistan; born into poverty, no formal education, but now the pivotal figure in the war on terrorism and forcing the hand of great nations in one of the most volatile regions in the world.

4) Joe Lieberman: The world seems to revolve around ol’ Joe and his bitter, never-ending and very deep well of resentment against the liberals who handed him a primary defeat in 2006. He’s being credited for single-handedly emasculating health reform by coming out against stuff like the Medicare buy-in compromise that he was all in favor of just three months ago. He’s mercurial, petty, unpredictable- and great copy!

5) Barack Obama: Everybody’s darling a year ago- he’s completely lost his mojo. Many of the people who were passionately behind him are leaving in droves. He’s despised by conservatives who think he’s the socialist anti-Christ. He’s lost the confidence of liberals with his policies on Afghanistan and his pragmatic and some say, feckless, approach to health reform. He’s rapidly losing favor with independents who think he’s spending us into the poor house.

I will say this for Time. If they had actually wanted to sell copies of the magazine, they could have made a more inspired choice. I guess they must feel very principled about this Bernanke pick, even at the risk of their circulation numbers.