You reading, Mr Kelly? Thanks for all your input on who should be made Time’s Person of the Year. Lance Armstrong? A little off-topic, but surely he’s worth celebration in some sense. Barry Bonds? A reader explains:
Bonds is fast staking a claim to being the greatest player in history, better than Babe Ruth. And in 2004 this guy had quite a year: fourth consecutive MVP (never happened before), 7th overall MVP (never happened before) and he’s 40 years old. He also weathered a steroids scandal, and the death of his father. Why not?
Maybe because he’s regarded by a lot of people as an asshole. (But that would disqualify a lot of others as well). Among the bad guys, Zarqawi and Arafat stand out:
Arafat invented modern terrorism, setting a precedent that a young new leader – perhaps a Palestinian, perhaps a Chechen, perhaps a Saudi (turmoil is coming to the Royals, and soon) – will take up Yasser’s torch and take it higher and further. His legacy has yet to come; he laid the cornerstone of legitimizing terror in the ‘world’s’ view by killing innocents while being a celebrity, welcomed in halls of power across the globe, ranging from the White House, the UN, and the Vatican.
Or both Arafat and Zarqawi? On a lighter note, why not Mr iPod, Steve Jobs? Then there’s the pajamahideen. Still, it’s difficult to say a media revolution in one country trumps world-historical change elsewhere. Then there’s the “gay American.” It sure was a gay year: McGreevey, Cheney, O’Donnell, Lincoln, the marriage revolution across the world. As one reader puts it,
We have them to thank for (1) electing Bush, (2) exposing the Republicans as Islamofascist equivalents, (3) exposing the Democrats as hypocrites, (4) Arafat’s death and (5) the tackiest wedding pictures of all time.
Ahem. But the marriage movement in some ways is an effort to move away from the “gay American” syndrome and to treat all of us as merely citizens, with the same rights and responsibilities. A real possibility: Christopher Reeve. But I think you have to be alive to be included. Could “just dead” count?
EDUCATION BY MURDER: Daniel Pipes on the Theo van Gogh case.
The Dish 