Markos Moulitsas
Creator of the
political blog The Daily
Kos.
Al Gore. No person has drilled global warming -- one of the key challenges facing our planet in the coming decades -- into the public debate as effectively as Gore did this past year. If we are to avert what appears to be calamitous disaster, it will be because of Gore's work this year.
Craig Newmark
Founder of the
transformative web site Craig's List and blogger at craigblog.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. They speak truth to power at significant risk, challenging the entire press to do so.
Neal Pollack
Writer and lead singer for the much-missed Neal Pollack
Invasion and author of the forthcoming Alternadad.
Steve Nash. I was going to nominate Osama bin Laden, who must be licking his chops every day when he sees what Iraq has become, but why not choose someone I love instead of someone despicable? Nash, through his pass-first-ask-questions-later-but-also-score-at-will style of play, is as much a philosopher as a basketball player, someone who's continually redefining what it means to be "the man" on the court. In this, what will be his championship season, he's going to become as important to basketball, and therefore to world culture, as Michael Jordan was in his prime.
Louis Rossetto
Cofounder,
Wired magazine, connected
to the 'Net in the middle of a rainforest in Costa Rica.
Bloggers. For hastening the demise of increasingly irrelevant (or is that malevolent?) mainstream media, and for promoting an iterative, networked, and profoundly democratic dialogue that is better connecting us to reality--and thus better enabling the species to thrive and evolve.
RU Sirius
Former editor of Mondo 2000, host of The RU Sirius
Show, and contributor to 10 Zen
Monkeys.
George W. Bush. His administration has done World Historic Damage to American power. This year, some Americans started to get it. LOSER!
Jacob Sullum
Reason senior editor and
author, most recently, of Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug
Use.
Sacha Baron Cohen. As Borat Sagdiyev, the clueless Kazakh TV reporter with unerringly bad manners, he managed to be accused of elitism for producing a hit comedy that relies heavily on jokes about drinking, shitting, and fucking your sister.
Jeff A. Taylor
Reason Express
writer.
S.R. Sidarth, the "Macaca" guy. Grassroots, distributed media angle, Hindu, and brown - reflecting America's continuing demographic shift -- wants to be a godforsaken greenie lawyer, etc.
Jesse Walker
Reason managing editor and
author of Rebels in the Air.
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alan|12.16.09 @ 11:58AM|#
Hey man, this comment field is open!
alan|12.16.09 @ 12:01PM|#
Besides, one of the few things I hate more than the "Person of the Year" award itself is all the critics who act as though Time's choice is somehow significant. You think you can make a better pick? Start a blog, list your own choices, and ignore Time entirely. You can do that now. That's why you're the Person of the Year.
Ah, back in the starry eyed days of the one-up meta. We were so young then, and the internets too.