I Want a Recount!

As for Time Magazine's choice of Vladimir Putin as Person of the Year: it's not only disappointing (because Gore deserves the honor), but it's really disturbing. Putin should not be honored for turning Russia back into a Soviet-style foil to European and Western democracy. Time Magazine credits Putin for "his extraordinary feat of leadership in taking a country that was in chaos and bringing it stability". But that "extraordinary feat" comes at equally extraordinary prices--ones that go against our democratic principles.

Granted, there have been other Persons of the Year who received the honor not for the positive influence they had over history, but for the profound negatives they wielded over the world: Hitler, Stalin, and the Ayatollah are three examples. But Putin is a diminutive blip compared to Hitler and Stalin's everlasting infamy. And the last thing Putin needs right now is a little encouragement from the West to continue what he's been doing.

In a year when Climate Change entered the universal consciousness, I think Time Magazine really got the Person of the Year wrong. Putin's effect is limited to a region that is already fraught with so much instability that his stabilizing efforts seem almost futile. Gore's effect this year has been much more significant: awakening all of us--from Hollywood to Bollywood--to the reality of a planet in peril. The awakening began with Gore's film, which proferred the explanations for global warming, and it culminated in Gore's winning of the Nobel Prize and the recent agreements on climate change in Indonesia.

I want a recount!