"YOU", the voice (whose anonymity we protect) said on the phone in a definite and perspicacious tone, "have been selected Time Magazine Person of the Year in this year's Christmas issue."
"WHAT?" WHAT??"
That is the former "Man of the Year" award - it is BIG, although its selective qualities of goodness are questionable given some of the past recipients.
Of course, the LawPundit was incredulous at the news of having been granted this momentous award. The LawPundit is not the type of person that one would count as a gullible sort, never. Quite the contrary, he belongs to the category of law-trained persons whose character is marked by skepticism and autonomy - just ask the gullible archaeologists, Egyptologists, historians of astronomy and Biblical scholars of this world.
In any case, what we lacked here in the instant case were sufficient facts. We simply needed more information. Not wishing to offend the caller, we asked diplomatically:
"What was the basis for this award?"
The answer, the voice said, was found written in Time itself:
"Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I'm not going to watch Lost tonight. I'm going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I'm going to mash up 50 Cent's vocals with Queen's instrumentals? I'm going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?
The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you."
I was flabbergasted.OK, to be fair and balanced and accurate, it was actually a distant acquaintance who had the 7-foot long pet Iguana that he recently sold because it was terrifying the neighborhood on his evening walks - always on a leash, mind you - but given the recent news about the pending parthenogenic virgin Komodo Dragon "Christmas" births, he had played with idea of getting one of those cute little Indonesian Komodo Dragons as a house pet - until he saw THIS photo, so that he is now settling for a Siamese cat. We note here that the Gallup Poll on this December 21, 2006, released a (pay for play) report on Americans and their Pets, by Frank Newport, Jeffrey M. Jones, Lydia Saad, and Joseph Carroll. Generally, they conclude, things are going to the dogs.
But much of that description of the Person of the Year at Time is otherwise very true. We certainly blog about our state of mind and the state of the nation even moreso, especially since opinions on that latter subject are so diverse and divergent (see State of the Nation with Calvin Ayre of Bodog Nation, Daily Kos: State of the Nation, State of the Nation's EcoSystems, STAT-USA).
Furthermore, we are definitely among the world champions in "working for nothing" here at LawPundit. We may not be listed yet in the Guinness World Records, but we will be. Never was so much done for so little, but perhaps that is in the nature of blogging, yet.
How right Time is. Could this award be for real? And what did it all mean?
To be on the safe side, we concluded that the Person of the Year award could most assuredly have been given to LawPundit on the merits, and so we thought we would check it out by going to the original sources:
"Well, that could fit us. It surely could. We need to check this out. Can you give us an online source on that?"
And indeed, the voice told us, there was a direct online connection to Time - HERE.
In fact, it corroborated what the voice had told us on the phone when it said:
"YOU have been selected Time Magazine Person of the Year".
