12.07.2016 03:47 PM

Men of their years

Man of the year, 2016 and 1938. In yesterday walks tomorrow, etc.

18 Comments

  1. Ron says:

    People don’t learn shit from history.

  2. Al Zwikker says:

    Brilliant…

  3. Lance says:

    And? So was Winston Churchill and JFK.

  4. redraven says:

    this is what i like about Kinsella. subtlety.

  5. Charlie says:

    I like it.

    Few things:

    1) Hitler, Stalin, Giuliani and Ebola Fighters have all graced the cover. The magazine is meant to recognize the person(s) who made the largest impact on the year; whether good or bad. Critics, be they progressives, Democrats or anti-Trump individuals need to understand that despite our dislike of Trump, he was 2016 in essence.

    2) There are a lot of reasons to be happy about this cover if you dislike Trump:

    –> “President of the Divided States of America” is a direct insult at Donald Trump; who has failed to bring anyone together despite his repeated claims of America coming “together”. It severely undermines his legitimacy as President and you know its eating him up on the inside.

    –> The imagery of the photo itself is very powerful: the placement of the “M” looking like horns; his back turned towards the viewer; the chair is tacky, large and noticeably large yet looks nothing like a President’s chair

    3) There is an argument to be made in favour of other people as opposed to simply against Trump. Meaning, Vladimir Putin has been very, very influential in the world over this year. I don’t think any world leader has made an impact as much as he did on 2016 — for more reasons than one. Trump may have been the headlines, but Putin’s presence in the American election and Syria have been considerably consequential.

    • Kevin says:

      That struck me too – the picture is a perfect example of multimodality, right down to the worn out fabric on the garage sale chair. I can’t make out the design on the back though. With everything else that’s going on in that picture, the design has to mean something, too.

      • David says:

        It looks like a stylized fleur-de-lis. I don’t know what the symbolism could be with regards Trump, though. A hint at growth of far-right in France and Europe? Anyway, I agree nothing about the cover is flattering.

      • Charlie says:

        Yeah, the fabric stuck out to me too.

        It could be a reference to the tired class from which Donald Trump hails; being an old, wealthy, white-male. Its also noticeably unmodern. Which, as we know by the decorating of Trump’s NY apartment, could be a reference to his phase of mind and it being frozen in decades past.

  6. dave constable says:

    Patriarchs, eh!
    I remember a line from Maclennan’s novel, ‘The Watch That Ends the Night, where a Norman Bethune type character says that the Nazis in Germany are charming evil out of people the way a fakir with a flute charms a cobra out of its basket.

  7. Ray says:

    He looks different somehow….must be the suit.

  8. Steve T says:

    Hyperbole notwithstanding, I think Time Magazine is properly making the point that “Person Of The Year” is not a popularity contest, nor is it endorsing the individual. It is simply indicating who was the most dominant person, with the most global impact, over the past year. In that respect, they got this one right (just like they did with Hitler).

  9. Michael Bluth says:

    As a supporter of Israel and a friend of the Jewish people I would think that analogy is a step too far.

    As terrible a person as Trump is I think such comparisons can be seen as trivializing the unspeakable horrors of the Shoah.

    Stalin, Deng and Khomeini could all have been used to the same effect.

    • David Gibson says:

      None of the three you cite were ever popularly elected. Hitler was and, like Trump, came to power after earning only a minority of the vote. I have described Trump’s ascendancy as simply one step in a rolling coup d’etat.

  10. Matt says:

    Anyone else see devil horns in the M over Trumps head?

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