House of Mirth

The word is out, folks, on Time Magazine's Person of the Year. In the past, they've given the nod to Charles Lindbergh, Haile Selassie I, Mahatma Ghandi, Wallis Simpson, Adolf Hitler, and Richard Nixon (twice). This year, the winner is...You. Assuming, of course, that You have already leaped into the giant mosh pit of digital democracy and are "using or creating content on the World Wide Web." That means that I, too, am a Person of the Year, since I've created this very blog and am about to start an excellent new gig at Netscape.com. Whoopee! Still, I feel a slight tingle of disappointment. According to this report on Yahoo, the original front runner was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But Richard Stengel, the magazine's managing editor, confessed that it "just felt to me a little off selecting him." I second his emotion, especially while the Iranian president's Holocaust Denial Slumber Party is in full swing. On the other hand, I prefer it when the magazine chooses an actual human being, with globe-girdling accomplishments and individual peccadilloes and at least a smidgeon of personality. Why? Maybe it's that classic dilemma, stated most elegantly by Groucho Marx: I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members. In any case, congratulations to all of us. And thank you!