Mark Gisleson at Norwegianity directed me to this James Wolcott post, What kind of a maniac puts eagles in a Christmas tree?, that I, devoted Wolcott reader though I am, somehow missed. Here are just three sentences of Wolcott on Matt Taibbi’s Time Person of the Year article to demonstrate why you should read this post:
The annual Whatzit of the Year allows the editorial brass to rise above the trendy transient and serve as clerks of posterity, judges of History. Without fail we get the same pre-announcement buildup to the big ho-hum moment. Items in the press about the deliberation process, the “lively editorial debate”–a euphemism that implies some hothead wiping the mustard from his mouth, tossing the crumpled napkin on the conference table, and flouncing out at the very idea of enshrining so-and-so on the cover.
Matt Taibbi:
The “Person of the Year” issue has always been a symphonic tribute to the heroic possibilities of pompous sycophancy, but the pomposity of this year’s issue bests by a factor of at least two or three the pomposity of any previous issue. From the Rushmorean cover portrait of Bush (which over the headline “An American Revolutionary” was such a brazen and transparent effort to recall George Washington that it was embarrassing) to the “Why We Fight” black-and-white portraiture of the aggrieved president sitting somberly at the bedside of the war-wounded, this issue is positively hysterical in its iconolatry. One even senses that this avalanche of overwrought power worship is inspired by the very fact of George Bush’s being such an obviously unworthy receptacle for such attentions. From beginning to end, the magazine behaves like a man who knocks himself out making an extravagant six-course candlelit dinner for a blow-up doll, in an effort to convince himself he’s really in love.
Definitely Metaphor of the Year.