Congratulations to Lee Doren for two years of HowTheWorldWorks. As a subscriber to the Youtube channel, I can say that I have enjoyed Doren’s videos and have used much of what he has said for my own blog posts, most notably his videos concerning Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff. Here is his latest video noting his channel’s two year anniversary. Enjoy!
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All posts for the month December, 2010
This was sent to me by someone I deeply respect. In his words, it is interesting and worth the read.
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Shalom chaverim,
Let me start by saying that it is with great sadness that I share your grief over the deaths of more than 40 brave Israelis who lost their lives – many while trying to save others in the great fire near Haifa. My country, the Netherlands, is amongst other countries helping to put down this fire, which is threatening the lives and property of thousands of your compatriots. I offer my heartfelt condolences to the families of those who perished. My thoughts are with them. Israel is an immense source of inspiration for me. When I came to your country for the first time as a teenager, I lived here for a year.
I am not ashamed to stand with Israel, but proud. I am grateful to Israel. I will always defend Israel. Your country is the cradle of Western civilization. We call it the Judeo-Christian civilization with good reason.
Israel is often being treated unfairly. The world looks at the plight of the Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon, Gaza, and other places, and many blame Israel. The UN claims that there are over 4.7 million Palestinian refugees, and many blame Israel. These voices say the Palestinians should be allowed to return to “Palestine.” But where is Palestine? Many say Israel must solve the problems of Palestine. But is Israel guilty of the plight of the Palestinian refugees?
My answer is “No.” The Arab leaders are to be blamed – and Islam is to be blamed. Let me first tell you why, and then I will tell you where Palestine can be found.
At the end of World War II, there were 50 million refugees. Today, all the refugee problems dating from before the 1950s have been solved. All, except one – the problem of the Palestinians.
Why did this problem not get solved? The reason is simple: Because the Arab countries did not allow it to get solved. And because Islam does not allow it to get solved.
In May 1948, the number of Jews in the Arab countries was estimated to be close to 1 million. Today, fewer than 8,000 Jews are left in the entire Arab world. In 1948, the Arab countries forced the Jews out and confiscated their properties. More Jews fled the Arab countries than Arabs fled Israel. Where are the Jewish refugee camps? There are none.
So, why are there refugee camps for Palestinians in areas surrounding Israel? Because the Palestinians were not welcomed in the neighboring Arab countries. There was no Arab solidarity; the refugees were forced into camps and slums, where many of their descendants still linger today.
Under international definitions the status of refugee or displaced person only applies to first generation refugees. However, the UN makes an exception for Palestinians. Descendants of Palestinian refugees are granted the same refugee status as their ancestors. Consequently, the number of so-called Palestinian refugees registered with the UN increased from 711,000 in 1950 to over 4.7 million in 2010. These refugees are being used as a demographic weapon against Israel.
Instead of blaming the inhospitable Arab regimes, many blame Israel.
My friends, the blame should be laid where it belongs: with the Arab world. The Jewish refugees built new lives for themselves. They did what millions of refugees have done in the course of history, including, in the 20th century, the Germans who had to leave Sudetenland and the lands east of the Oder and Neisse rivers, the Hungarians who fled Transylvania, the Greeks who were ejected from the Aegean coast of Anatolia, the Hindus who fled the Punjab.
With each generation, the resentment of these refugees and their descendants slowly fades away. Time heals all wounds. Acceptance of the new situation is the norm.
Islam, however, conditions Muslims to hate Jews. It is a religious duty to do so. Israel must be destroyed because it is the homeland of the Jews.
Influential Islamic scholars, such as Muhammad Tantawi, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar in Cairo, the most prestigious center of Muslim learning, call Jews “enemies of Allah.” Tantawi, who died last March, was generally considered a moderate by the Western media and policy makers. But how did this “moderate” address a delegation of Palestinian Muslims who visited him in 2002?
He urged them to intensify suicide attacks against Israelis, stating that every so-called “martyrdom operation” against – I quote – “any Israeli, including children, women, and teenagers, is a legitimate act according to [Islamic] religious law, and an Islamic commandment, until the people of Palestine regain their land.” – end of quote.
Nizar Qabbani, one of the most revered poets in the Arab world, praised the madness of those who are blinded by an ideology of hatred. In his poem Ode to the Intifada, he wrote: “O mad people of Gaza, A thousand greetings to the mad. The age of political reason has long departed. So teach us madness.”
That is the nature of the Islamic enemies confronting the Jews – sheer madness.
Israel, on the other hand, is a beacon of light; it is like a Hanukkah menorah whose lights have been kindled in a region that until 1948 was engulfed by darkness.
Friends, Israel is not to blame for the situation in the Middle East. The problem is Islam’s rejection of Israel’s right to exist. Only last month, Fatah concluded its convention in Ramallah by declaring its blatant refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
The problem is also our Western leaders’ refusal to understand that Israel is the West’s canary in the coalmine: If the Jews are denied the right to live in freedom and peace, soon we will all be denied this right. If the light of Israel is extinguished, we will all face darkness. If Israel falls, the West falls. That is why we are all Israel.
But as long as the West refuses to understand how the Palestinians are used as a weapon against Israel, it will not be able to see who is truly to blame; it will not be able to see that it is not Israel’s duty to provide a Palestinian state – for the simple reason that there already is a Palestinian state and that state is Jordan.
Indeed, my friends, Jordan is Palestine. Take a look at the map of this part of the world after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. Both contemporary Israel and contemporary Jordan were part of the British Mandate of Palestine.
In 1922, the British partitioned Palestine into Cisjordan and Transjordan – the latter comprising 78 per cent of the territory of Palestine. The British handed that territory over to their ally, the Hashemite strongman Abdallah ibn Hussein. Abdallah was the son of the emir Hussein bin Ali, guardian of the Islamic holy city of Mecca. The Hashemites belong to the Quraish tribe – the tribe of Islam founder Muhammad. They are a foreign body in Palestine.
In 1946, Transjordan became an independent state under Hashemite rule. In November 1947, the United Nations proposed to partition the remaining 22 per cent of Palestine. The territory between the Jordan River and the sea was divided into a Jewish and an Arab part. The Jewish representatives accepted the UN partition plan, but the Arab representatives refused. In an attempt to “drive all the Jews into the sea,” they began the 1948 war – which they lost.
They took revenge, however, on the Jews in East Jerusalem and the rest of Cisjordan – the ancient provinces of Judea and Samaria – held by the Arab forces. This entire region was ethnically cleansed of all Jews. Even the names of Judea and Samaria were wiped off the map and replaced by the ridiculous term “West Bank.” A river bank of over 40 kilometers wide. I come from a country full of rivers, and there the river banks are only a few dozen meters wide.
Israel, including Judea and Samaria, has been the land of the Jews since time immemorial. Judea means Land of the Jews. Never in the history of the world has there been an autonomous state in the area that was not Jewish. The Diaspora of the Jews, which began after their defeat by the Romans in AD 70, did not lead to the departure of all the Jews from their ancient homeland. Jews had been living in the Jordan Valley for centuries until the Arab invaders drove them out in 1948, when the provinces of Judea and Samaria were occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, which abbreviated its name to Jordan in 1950.
And until 1967, when Israel regained the ancient Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria, no-one, not a single Islamic scholar or Western politician, ever demanded that there be an independent Palestinian state in the so-called West Bank.
Must Israel trade land for peace? Should it assign Judea and Samaria to another Palestinian state – a second one, next to Jordan? My friends, let me be very clear: The conflict in the Middle East is not a conflict over territory, but rather an ideological battle.
People are mistaken when they assume that giving up Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem and letting the Palestinians have it, will end the conflict between Israel and the Arabs. In 2005, Israel sacrificed the settlements in Gaza for the sake of peace. Did it get peace?
On the contrary, because the conflict is essentially ideological, the situation worsened. Because the conflict is ideological, territorial concessions are counterproductive. Ideologies cannot be defeated by concessions. They are encouraged and emboldened by it.
Ideologies must be confronted with the iron will never to give in, “never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty.” That is the lesson which the world learned from Winston Churchill when he confronted the evil ideology of nazism.
This conflict here in the Middle East is not about land and borders, but about Islamic jihadism opposing Western liberty. From the moment that Israel was founded, the Arab leaders have rejected every partition plan and every initiative for a territorial settlement. The Islamic ideology simply does not accept the concept of a Jewish state. Neither Hamas nor Fatah are willing to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in their historic homeland. No territorial concession on Israel’s part can ever change that.
Israel’s ideological enemies want to wipe Israel out as a nation. They simply deny the Jewish state the right to exist and to live in peace, dignity and liberty.
For the sake of its own survival and security, Israel needs defendable borders. A country that is only 15 kilometers wide is impossible to defend. That is the strategic reason why Jews need to settle Judea and Samaria.
Therefore, the Jewish towns and villages in Judea and Samaria are not an impediment to peace; they are an expression of the Jewish right to exist in this land. They are tiny outposts of freedom, defying ideological forces which deny not only Israel but the entire West the right to live in peace, dignity and liberty.
Let us never forget that Islam threatens not just Israel; Islam threatens the entire world. Without Judea and Samaria, Israel cannot protect Jerusalem. The future of the world depends on Jerusalem. If Jerusalem falls, Athens and Rome – and Paris, London and Washington – will be next.
Thus, Jerusalem is the main front protecting our common civilization. When the flag of Israel no longer flies over the walls of Jerusalem, the West will no longer be free.
However, a peaceful solution must also be found for the many Palestinians in the refugee camps in Lebanon, Gaza and elsewhere. Each year, hundreds of millions of euros and dollars are spent on the Palestinian refugees in international aid.
The financial assistance, however, did not provide the refugees a new home, a place to live and build a future for their children and grandchildren. It is obvious where this place should be. It should be Palestine, just as, after the Second World War, the obvious place for the German refugees from the East to go to, was Germany. Since Jordan is Palestine, it is the duty of the Jordanian government to welcome all Palestinian refugees who voluntarily want to settle there.
Until the late 1980s, Jordan’s Hashemite rulers did not deny that their country was Palestine. They said so on numerous occasions. In 1965, King Hussein said: “Those organizations which seek to differentiate between Palestinians and Jordanians are traitors.” As late as 1981, Hussein repeated – I quote – “Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan.”
In March 1971, The Palestine National Council, too, stated that – I quote – “what links Jordan to Palestine is a national bond [...] formed, since time immemorial, by history and culture. The establishment of one political entity in Transjordan and another in Palestine is illegal.” – end of quote.
By the late 1970s, however, the Arab authorities began to differentiate between Jordanians and Palestinians. What was previously considered to be treason and illegality suddenly became the propaganda line.
In March 1977, PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein admitted in a candid interview in the Dutch newspaper Trouw: – I quote -
“Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot lay claim to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.” – end of quote.
In 1988, as the first Intifada raged, Jordan officially renounced any claim of sovereignty to the so-called West Bank. In recent years, the Jordanian authorities have stripped thousands of Palestinians of their Jordanian citizenship. They do so for two reasons.
First, because the alien Hashemite rulers fear that the Palestinians might one day take over their own country. And second, because stripping Palestinians of their Jordanian citizenship supports the falsehood that Jordan is not a part of Palestine. And that, consequently, the Palestinians must attack Israel if they want a place of their own.
By arbitrarily reducing thousands of their citizens to statelessness, the Jordanian authorities want to force the Palestinians to turn their aspirations towards the establishment of another Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. This decision is a great injustice committed by the Hashemite rulers of Jordan – this foreign clan which the British installed.
I am not naïve. I am not blind to the possibility that if Jordan were to be ruled by the Palestinians, this might lead to political radicalization in Jordan. However, a continuation of the present situation will most certainly lead to radicalization. We need a paradigm shift. If we keep thinking along the same lines as we have done so far, no peaceful solution of the Palestinian problem is possible without endangering the existence of Israel and disrupting the social and economic fabric in Judea and Samaria. Resettling millions of Palestinians in these small provinces is simply impossible and is not going to happen.
To the skeptics, I say: What is the alternative? Leaving the present situation as it is? No, my friends, the world must recognize that there has been an independent Palestinian state since 1946, and it is the Kingdom of Jordan.
Allowing all Palestinians to voluntarily settle in Jordan is a better way towards peace than the current so-called two-states-approach (in reality a three-states-approach) propagated by the United Nations, the U.S. administration, and governing elites all over the world. We only want a democratic non-violent solution for the Palestinian problem. This requires that the Palestinian people should be given the right to voluntarily settle in Jordan and freely elect their own government in Amman. If the present Hashemite King is still as popular as today, he can remain in power. That is for the people of Palestine to decide in real democratic elections.
My friends, let us adopt a totally new approach. Let us acknowledge that Jordan is Palestine.
And to the Western world I say: Let us stand with Israel because the Jews have no other state, while the Palestinians already have Jordan. Let us stand with Israel because the history of our civilization began here, in this land, the homeland of the Jews. Let us stand with Israel because the Jewish state needs defendable borders to secure its own survival. Let us stand with Israel because it is the frontline in the battle for the survival of the West.
We must speak the truth. The truth that Jordan is Palestine, the truth that Samaria and Judea are part of Israel, the truth that Jerusalem may not fall, the truth that Israel is the only democracy in a dark and tyrannical region, the truth that Israel is the linchpin of the West.
Of course, I am just a foreign guest and should be modest. Israel is a democracy and I respect every decision which its people and government will make. But I am proud to be here and grateful for the opportunity to share my thoughts and beliefs with you.
Because it is here that our civilization is under attack as we speak. It is here that we, men and women of the West, must show our resolve to defend ourselves. It is here that Israel has lit the light of freedom and that Europeans and Americans must help the Israelis to keep that light shining in the darkness. For Israel’s sake and for the sake of all of us.
Toda raba… And shalom to all of you.
It doesn’t surprise me that John Downs lost his job at AM 640. He so dedicated to the left-wing political philosophy that his responses are painfully predictable. For those who will defend him by saying that he won the Sam Ross Award for Best National Commentary in 2007, Katie Couric won the Walter Cronkite Award for Journalism Excellence last year and her ratings have hit record lows for CBS News. In any event, his and Marianne Meed Ward’s performance on ‘The Michael Coren Show’ Wednesday was cringe worthy. Thank to SDAMatt2, also known as “Mississauga Matt,” for the video clips.
Where do you begin with this nonsense? Let’s start with the comment by Downs that “humans were responsible for 9/11.” Obviously humans were responsible for what U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security General Janet Napolitano called a “man-caused disaster.” The issue here is that, like Napolitano, both Downs and Ward are unable to bring themselves to call this what it was, let alone admit that Islam was in any way responsible for the September 11th attacks. There is a reason why it is called Islamic terrorism and not “human terrorism.” If you can’t even name it, how can combat it? Apologists for Islam are fewer now as this nonsense is being challenged by clear thinking individuals. When even Bill Maher is expressing worries over the spread on Islamic supremacism in the Western world, it should demonstrate how ridiculous those like Downs and Ward are for espousing this politically correct nonsense.
As for the other comments by Downs and Ward, it further demonstrates how their damaged minds work. Take the politics out of it? As Karl Marx, arguably the most influential communist thinker in modern history, said, class struggle, more specifically the armed uprising of the working class, was necessary to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. This is something Marxism advocates, the proletariat revolution, which, as history shows, leads to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions. There is no way to take politics out of politically motivated murders.
Next, contrary to popular belief, Adolf Hitler wasn’t directly responsible for the Holocaust. It was Heinrich Himmler, who oversaw the concentration camps, extermination camps, and killing squads, as well as being the chief architect of the “Final Solution,” a plan drawn up at the Wannsee Conference which Hitler did not attend. Am I saying that Hitler shares no blame? Of course not. He was the one who was pushing for “racial hygiene,” as well as the man who put Himmler in a position to do all this, so he is definitely in part responsible those the mass murder of Jewish people. Aside from Himmler, the German people themselves are to blame for assisting, at the least, in spreading this racial hatred which led to the death of millions. David Menzies also points to the fault of the rest of the Western world for turning away the boats filled with Jews because of our own prejudices. The issue here is that Downs and Ward ignore the facts of the matter, that it wasn’t simply one man who was to blame for all this. The simple and ignorant answer they gave speaks to their political correct principles which dictate that the truth must be suppressed if it might offend someone.
What about his nonsense about talk radio hosts in the United States? Seeing how Downs continually refers to them, you would think he blames those like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck for the September 11th attacks and the Holocaust. I blame Michael Coren for playing to this false belief that the right are far more prejudicial than the left. After making this statement, Downs himself goes on to demonstrate the opposite.
This snobbery borders on bigotry. Downs hatred is based on what place in Canada a person comes from, so what else would you call it? Montreal has culture but Alberta doesn’t? Now that is debatable, especially since Alberta has its own unique Western culture which is personified by the Calgary Stampede. As for this kind of intolerance, it is, in my experience, mostly found on the left. Tammy Bruce, a conservative talk radio host who is also a lesbian, wrote an article for The Guardian last October discussing her own experience with this form of bigotry, stating that the left is only accepting as long as those like her don’t challenge their politically correct beliefs.
…Presumably, “batshit crazy”is an English liberal term of endearment, right? When I read another commenter’s description of American conservative women politicians as “a bunch of petty, incoherent shrews”, I was filled with joy at realising how great it was to be among authentic feminists once again.
Having made my point, I trust, I’ll now slip out of my snark suit and share a little secret with you. The real story of bigotry and intolerance is the fact that it lives and thrives on the left. As a gay woman who spent most of her adult life pushing the cart for liberal causes with liberal friends in a liberal city, I found that sexism, racism and homophobia are staples in the liberal world. The huge irony is liberals spend every ounce of energy promoting the notion that they are the banner carriers of individualism and personal freedom, yet the hammer comes down on anyone who dares not to conform to, or who dissents even in part from, the liberal agenda…
One has to wonder what Downs’ opinion of Bruce is. Does he, like so many of his colleagues, share a hatred for her because she doesn’t conform to their liberal agenda?
This final clip has to do with Ward’s own twisted beliefs. To his credit, Downs doesn’t approve of segregated seating at the Juba Restaurant in Toronto, a restaurant run in accordance to Sharia principles, but demonstrates just how ingrained his own political correct beliefs are by nearly backtracking on his disapproval when Coren jokingly asserts he was being “Islamophobic.”
What is scary about Ward’s comments is that she suggests using political power to force the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian sects to go against their own teachings. Just like her previous statements concerning the firing of Juan Williams by National Public Radio, let’s hope this woman never reaches a position where she can make her twisted beliefs law. As for the main point of her comments, leave it to Ward to make an ignorant comparison between the treatment of women by Christianity to the treatment of women by Islam. This isn’t an issue of woman’s rights issue, it is a sacrament, thus not open to debate. As Pope John Paul II stated in his 1994 letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, the Church does not have the authority to ordain women as this was a rite instituted by Jesus Christ himself. Clearly, Ward can’t wrap her small and empty mind around this fact, but there is more to this. How is the Church’s adherence to Christ’s teaching on a male priesthood comparable to the abuse of women in Islam? If it isn’t segregation, it is a woman’s place as a second-class citizen and Islamic teachings which advocate spousal abuse if a wife dares to disobey her husband. These aren’t the same Ward, so instead of being politically correct about this, try being honest.
If anything, both John Downs and Marianne Meed Ward demonstrate not just the factual, but the logical deficiencies of those who adhere to political correctness. In an attempt to not offend those who are themselves offensive, they refuse to acknowledge facts on the grounds that such facts aren’t in agreement with their warped view of reality. This way of nonsensical thinking, however, is becoming more and more unpopular and those still dedicated to it are finding that their beliefs aren’t as acceptable as they used to be. Everyone has a right to their own opinions, but not their own facts, especially ones that are twisted to suit said beliefs.
You didn’t need the power of future sight to predict that there are those who will take an event and blame their political rivals. When I heard about the story about Clay Duke, the Florida School Board Shooter, I was sure that there would be those on the left who would point to this and blame the Tea Party or talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh for this. Sure enough, Mike Malloy, a former Air America Radio host, couldn’t help himself and blamed Glenn Beck for Duke’s actions. Thank goes to Brian Maloney at The Radio Equalizer for this audio.
It is obvious that Malloy doesn’t listen to Beck’s radio show or watch him on Fox News. It is also obvious as to why he self-syndicates his own radio show since no radio broadcaster would risk a constant stream of lawsuits to have this vicious partisan as part of their line up. This isn’t even the worst of it. As a subscriber to The Radio Equalizer on Youtube, myself and many other could attest to the vitriol that comes out of this “man’s” (and I use that term loosely) mouth.
The fact is that Duke, like Amy Bishop and Joseph Andrew Stack, was simply crazy. This is someone who was pushed to his breaking point and lashed out. If Malloy wants to discuss political motivations, however, like Bishop and Stack, Duke subscribed to left-wing political thinking. This from Jonathon M. Seidl at The Blaze.
Clay Duke, the man who opened fire on a Florida school board Tuesday, posted a “last testament” on Facebook decrying the wealthy and linking to a slew of progressive sites including theprogressivemind.info and MediaMatters.org.
The chilling Facebook statement, posted under the “About Clay” section, talks about being born poor and how the rich “take turns fleecing us”:
My Testament: Some people (the government sponsored media) will say I was evil, a monster (V)… no… I was just born poor in a country where the Wealthy manipulate, use, abuse, and economically enslave 95% of the population. Rich Republicans, Rich Democrats… same-same… rich… they take turns fleecing us… our few dollars… pyramiding the wealth for themselves. The 95%… the us, in US of A, are the neo slaves of the Global South. Our Masters, the Wealthy, do, as they like to us…
This is why, as Doug Powers stated, the mainstream media has been quiet about Duke’s motivations. Even Canadian news outlets like CBC News ignored the political motivations for Duke’s actions, instead stating that this man was suffering from a personality disorder. The point is that if this issue was raised, the finger would be pointed directly at those like Malloy who espouse class warfare politics, the same kind which this man ranted about on his Facebook page. Am I saying that this is why Duke did this? Of course not. Crazy people will do crazy things, and this was simply an outlet for him to vent his frustrations. While an argument can be made about giving these people an incentive to do what they did, they are the ones who are ultimately responsible for their own actions. Same goes with the serial arsonist in Cape Cod who Michelle Malkin recently wrote about. This is someone who has found an outlet which is viewed as socially acceptable, thanks to the rhetoric pushed by those like the host on MSNBC, to vent their frustrations.
If Mike Malloy wasn’t so blinded by his own political biases, he would have thought twice about blaming Glenn Beck for Clay Duke’s actions. Having listened to Malloy’s rants in the past, I can say that if anyone is to blame for this man’s political beliefs, this vicious partisan should look in the mirror. Crazy people will do crazy things, but if Malloy wants to play this game, he will lose. Pathetic…
If you haven’t already heard, Mark Zuckerberg has been named as Time’s Person of the Year (POTY). How is it that a man who has accomplished relatively little in comparison to previous POTY like Henry Kissinger, Pope John Paul II, and Rudolph Giuliani, deserves this award? If you ask me, this is as ill-conceived as the Nobel Committee giving the Peace Prize to Barack Obama. This from Laura T. Coffey at USAToday.com.
…“It’s something that is transforming the way we live our lives every day,” Time Managing Editor Richard Stengel said as he announced the magazine’s 2010 selection live on TODAY Wednesday. “It’s social engineering, changing the way we relate to each other.”
If you regularly use a computer and interact even minimally with Facebook, you may feel as though you already know the 26-year-old Zuckerberg. And maybe you’ve seen the acclaimed movie “The Social Network,” which portrays Zuckerberg as socially stunted, calculating and arrogant. But Stengel told TODAY’s Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira that there’s more to the multibillionaire CEO.
“He’s very affable, he’s in the moment, he’s quick-witted,” Stengel said, but “he has this thing when he gets on camera” and becomes suddenly shy.
Stengel said Zuckerberg stands out for accomplishing something that’s never been done before: connecting millions of people and mapping the social relations among them…
As Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey pointed out, if the justification for this award is the impact of Facebook, than Time is two years late. This year’s pick for POTY is mostly likely due to the popularity of the recent movie, “The Social Network,” but is that enough to justify this choice? Even in comparison to other potential nominees, the Tea Party which has dominated the American political landscape for the last year, and Julian Assange who has dominated headlines with the leaking of sensitive documents through WikiLeaks, this Zuckerberg’s accomplishment isn’t that impressive. “Connecting millions of people and mapping the social relations among them”? I could spend a blog post debating this point, but all I will say is that it isn’t, in my opinion, a good reason to bestow such an honour.
To tell the truth, only one member of my immediate family uses Facebook. The rest of us had been signed up by someone else and have, for the most part, abandoned our respective pages. Returning to what Ed Morrissey said, Facebook is, more or less, a time suck. If making money and wasting time was enough to win this award, why hasn’t Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Nintendo’s Mario won the award? He has been on other Time magazine lists, but has yet to receive this honour. Miyamoto’s creation, which spawned a multi-billion dollar industry, has arguably had a far greater impact on our everyday lives than Mark Zuckerberg’s ever will.
Once again, this does appear ill-conceived. It’s a real shame as Time’s Person of the Year, like the Nobel Peace Prize, used to mean something.
UPDATE: Cassy Fiano at Hot Air’s Green Room posted out the Mark Zuckerberg pick for Time’s Person of the Year. Guess who was behind such a ill-conceived pick? Meghan McCain.
…I was one of the people on Time’s panel to nominate and argue over who was most deserving of the title. My two choices were the Tea Party and Mark Zuckerberg. The Time panel consisted of myself, Joe Trippi, Google’s Marissa Miller (who petitioned hard for Steve Job’s to be considered for person of the year), Wyclef Jean, and the executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement Daisy Khan. Everyone chose both interesting and year poignant candidates. Other notable people that were discussed were Nancy Pelosi, Glenn Beck and the country of Haiti…
…Time’s choice is like the man himself, innovative and controversial. The “Person of the Year” is an illusive title that has historically showcased, for better or worse, the individual who has had the most distinctive impact on the previous year. In 2010 Facebook hit its five hundred millionth member. A feat no social network has ever achieved before. David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network was also released to both commercial and critical acclaim. Mark Zuckerberg has become the first true millenial rockstar, and he is ushering in a completely new era.
At the end of the day, Mark Zuckerberg really is the most forward thinking and relevant candidate, even beating Julian Assange and the Tea Party. He transcends all of these people and, dare I say, even countries because all of these subjects are more than likely be read about, discussed, and debated via users on—where else?—Facebook. I believe that Mark Zuckerberg is the Henry Ford of our times and Facebook is the Model-T…
As Cassy points out, not only is the comparison between Zuckerberg and Henry Ford nonsensical, but this twit fulfills the blonde stereotype by misspelling Steve Jobs’ name. If anything, the fact that Meghan McCain was even part of a panel to decide this year’s POTY demonstrates just how insignificant the award has become. Matter of fact, this entire panel sounds detached from recent events. Why would Marissa Miller recommend Apple’s CEO? Is the release of the iPad really worth a nomination for this award?
So there you have it. The world’s largest weekly newsmagazine is incapable of putting together a reasonable group of individuals to pick this year’s winner… Pathetic…
