Time Magazine Gets 2020 Wrong
Ten People More Deserving of Time Magazine’s Person of the Year than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris
This week, Time Magazine announced their Person of the Year: President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris. In a normal year, this would seem a reasonable pick. In the past, the editors have chosen Presidents, Dictators, Prime Ministers, Popes, and various members of various governments. However, 2020 is not a normal year, not by a long shot. The following is a shortlist of people more deserving of the honor.
1. Health Care Workers: In 2014, Time Magazine honored the collective group of people involved in fighting the growing Ebola outbreak which killed over 11,000 people, including one American, between 2013 and 2016. There is no reason why they couldn’t have honored the men and women in the health care field who have worked throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. No one is more deserving of honor and appreciation in 2020 than the millions of health care workers including doctors, nurses, medical technicians, and researchers developing a vaccine. These people deserve accolades — all of them, from the recent graduate in the middle of nowhere Idaho all the way up to Drs. Fauci and Birk who have led the national pandemic response.
2. Retail Workers and “Essential” Employees: Since mid-March, millions of Americans have worked throughout the pandemic to provide everyone else with both basic necessities and frivolous luxuries. The associates at Sam’s and Costco who kept the toilet paper in stock and put up with the hoarders and “Karens” all year deserve recognition for their underappreciated work and sacrifice. The warehouse workers at Amazon have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic and we all owe them a great deal of thanks for the timely delivery of toilet paper and that new home office chair. These essential retail and warehouse employees as well as the health care professionals, police officers, firefighters, and other front-line heroes have not gotten nearly enough appreciation for the endless work they have done in 2020.
3. Small Businesses: Twenty-twenty has been A Year™ for small businesses. Hundreds of thousands of small business owners have lost their entire livelihoods in 2020 and hundreds of thousands more have fought hard to keep their business alive. Many of them have turned to Amazon, DoorDash, and UberEats to keep their businesses open during stay-at-home orders. Businesses that couldn’t transition to digital or delivery models have either had to shutter permanently or struggle through the year. The damage done to the American middle-class and small business owners is not going to be easily repaired. Drawing attention to this group of people who, in many cases, have lost everything they worked their entire lives for, is the least Time Magazine could do for them.
4. The Protestors: In a throwback to 2011, when Time Magazine recognized the various protestors from the Arab Spring to the Tea Party, recognizing the Black Lives Matter protests that rocked the US this year following the deaths of George Floyd at the hands of police officers would have been an appropriately woke way to end the year. The protests and subsequent crackdown from federal officers have been a powder keg all year. Time Magazine could have honored these mostly peaceful protestors and their struggle to raise awareness of their cause.
5. Breonna Taylor and George Floyd: This year we were reminded that sometimes bad police officers do terrible things and get away with it. The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor sparked nationwide protests and renewed interest in ending Qualified Immunity and No-Knock Warrants. No matter how you feel about them as individuals or the circumstances of their deaths, their deaths and the deaths of countless people at the hands of bad cops pushed the country to the brink amid a global pandemic and inspired many pieces of legislation. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul put forward the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act, Michigan Representative Justin Amash put forward the Ending Qualified Immunity Act. These along with countless other bills targeting police reform have languished in Congress this year and will soon be forgotten.
6. Dr. Anthony Fauci: As the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Fauci has been a large part of the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic. No matter how you feel about Dr. Fauci and the national response, you cannot deny that he has had an outsized impact on the country this year.
7. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo: The narrative since about May has been that Governor Cuomo and New York are the models every state should follow even though New York had one of the worst death rates from COVID-19 in the country. Still, keeping with that narrative, it would have made more sense to give him Person of the Year and let him take another victory lap and book tour.
8. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The late Supreme Court Justice was, among other things, a national icon. Her death and the subsequent nomination of Justice Amy Coney Barrett triggered an immense fundraising haul for Democrats running for office. The strong response to the rushed nomination and vote is probably more responsible for Donald Trump’s loss in Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania than just about anything else. Based on how the election turned out, as close as it was in many places, a pending Supreme Court nomination would have been a bigger motivator for reluctant Trump voters than reluctant Biden voters.
9. Donald Trump: People aren’t going to like this, but Donald Trump managed to accomplish quite a bit this year despite the pandemic. In general, it is not unfair to say that the national response to COVID-19 and other domestic crises was, in a word, horrendous. However, the emphasis on developing a vaccine and finding a balance between preventing deaths from COVID-19 and deaths of despair from the lockdowns and economic collapse was not an easy needle to thread. Outside of domestic failures, the Trump administration has managed to broker more peace treaties between Israel and their neighboring Arab nations than any other President. That is quite the accomplishment in normal times.
10. People Who Wear Masks over Their Nose: In the end, anyone who wears their mask correctly and has done as much as possible throughout this year to mitigate the risks of spreading COVID-19 is a hero. We have all sacrificed so much this year and I think we all deserve a little pat on the back. So, if you have done your part, good job.
Time Magazine couldn’t choose between giving the honor to Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, but they didn’t seem to have any issue choosing a couple of career politicians who spent the year asking for money for themselves over the millions of people who have sacrificed so much for others during this difficult year. It is deplorable. Hopefully, 2021 will be a better year for everyone.
