Angela Merkel Is Time’s Person of the Year

Time magazine which is now runs about four pages a week set itself up years ago for failure with its Man of the Year novelty. It’s that kind of gimmick that plays for a while, but eventually tires and attempts to change it up grow stale and contrived as well. You do Hitler for attention. You do the computer for novelty. You run out of fresh. Eventually everybody starts looking forward to the Fall meeting to decide the next Person of the Year with the excitement of a visit to the abortion clinic. Yeah, we gotta do it. I wish we didn’t. Who’s that guy with a beard holding a gun?

This year the remaining staff at Time picked German Chancellor Angela Merkel for a whole bunch of reasons mostly related to just surrendering their pick. Merkel is an okay leader of an okay country doing just okay mostly keeping its head down and trying to get by. Why not give it to a 50-something Irish grandma in Boston in the winter. She’s doing about the same. Trump was on the finalist list, along with the titular head of ISIS. In the least, both seem more relevant to the news cycle of the past year. Time magazine noted how Merkel was key in helping to negotiate the European debt deal with Greece. Who can forget that moment?

It’s not that we don’t need national magazines anymore, it’s that we don’t need crappy ones that have given up. It’s one thing for Playboy to ditch nudity, it’s another for a national current events and news magazine of great luster to surrender into Merkel. Actually, those are the same. Back to the Kardashians. Real life is overrated.