Ferret of the Year

I don't necessarily expect that any of the non-Americans would have seen this, but did anybody else know that George W Bush won Time's Person of the Year for 2000?

Wug?

I opened up a desk drawer at work today and saw his weasely little face poking out at me. Once I recovered, I stared with disbelief. Yup, there it was, and no amount of eye-rubbing changed what lay before me -- George W Bush, Person of the Year.

How this happened is beyond me. I can't bring myself to read the article to fully find out. Just looking at the pictures about did me in, particularly the one with the caption that states "Bush found postelection peace on his 1,600-acre spread", right after the article's sub-caption which totes Bush as "rugged".

Give me 1,600 acres of land, I can pretend I'm rugged too.

Are there so few heroes left in the world that somebody can become person of the year just by beating somebody else in a farce of an election? I don't pretend to be an expert on George Jr's achievements, but it seems to me that he's chiefly adept at killing people. So was Ted Bundy, but I doubt he won Person of the Year, 1989.

To my way of thinking, a "Person of the Year" should be an individual who stands out from their 6.5 billion cousins as a prime example of what humanity can do if it works hard enough. Discover a cure for cancer? Damned skippy, you could be a Person of the Year. Devote your life to finding homes for the homeless? Sounds worthy to me. Even an entertainer who manages to make this farce of a life worth living for the rest of us is deserving. But a man riding the coat tails of his famous father to win an election that he had a 50% chance of winning to start with? I can't think of a single average person whose life was made better by George W's presence in 2000.

Bah. I hereby nominate myself as Person of the Year for 2001. I haven't done anything to deserve it, but that hardly seems to be a requirement. And if nothing else, even I am more photogenic than monkey-man Bush.