Why I Stopped Reading Time Magazine

I stopped reading Time Magazine in 2003.

Over at Lucas and Big T's, I find myself watching CNN with a healthy air of irony, as always. They do a big lead-up into who TIME magazine's "Man of the Year" is, but keep flipping back and forth to images of the Iraq situation and various actions of the invading American force.
I'm thinking TIME will have to say it's Bush for "Man of the Year", it has to be Bush, right? Not because he's a great man by any means, in fact I think he's a ruthless money-grubbing cock-sucker, but can there be any doubt that he was the man the world most talked about and watched in 2003? Not bloody likely.

However, I was wrong the year before. The year before I thought the Man of the Year was going to be Osama-Bin-on-Dialysis, and again, not because he's a great man either, just the most talked about, appeared in the most newscasts, newspaper and magazine covers, the most talked about.

I had always assumed this was the protocol for determining Man of the Year, because they gave it to HITLER in 41(?), and they were right to do it, because he was the figure everybody was talking about. He was an atrocious asshole and probably one of the top five most terrible men to have ever walked the earth (so far), but that year he was the biggest figure in the news, bar none, and that’s why he was on there.

I keep watching CNN blast the horn of American empiricism and see more and more shots of the US soldiers, still waiting for them to give the story on "Man of the Year." I reflect on how we keep reading from foreign sources about American soldiers that are committing suicide over there, and how we never hear about that on CNN, how the soldiers are never asked about the big WHY and about the big LIE about why they’re over there. I mean it’s not like there was never any time to ask the question! Their inbed/inbred/embedded, right? This in itself was evidence enough of CNN's complete lack of journalistic integrity, as if the whole lead-up to and the imbed/inbred/in-bed reporting fiasco of Gulf Deux weren't enough.

Then a drumroll is presented and it shows the cover of TIME, and the legend underneath says "Man of the Year." When revealed it is three soldiers: all young, one white male, one white female, one black male. I feel like somebody hit me in the gut.

That's the Man of the Year: the war machine that will go wherever they're told, and pump lead into whoever is required.

The guy who fired from a tank into a hotel holding non-US government friendly media? Man of the year!

The guy that dropped leaflet bombs that didn't ignite and will not ignite until stumbled on by a child four years from now? Man of the Year!

The economically downtrodden that signed up for his country as his only way out and now doesn’t have a clue what the fuck he’s doing there? Man of the Year!

The guy who dropped bombs over every square inch of a major city? Man of the Year!

The guy who killed himself when he found out his country had lied to him? Man of the Year!

Also quite reflective of Dubya's impressively creative initiative: if you hate MY war then you hate YOUR soldiers, so show support for your impoverished sons and daughters (but not mine) and show support for our brand new empire. Everybody backs the troops, right?

Lucas finally puts it into perspective for me: "I don't understand why you're so shocked about any of this. You don't expect TIME to hoover on corporate dick like everybody else?"
He'd hit the nail square on the head. That's somehow precisely what I thought, that they were above all that. TIME was what I considered to be the foundation of balanced reporting and journalistic integrity. Now they just pander propaganda, whores of the ilk of CNN or FoxNews, a mouth-piece for govt/corp lies.

Two positives:
Positive #1: You’re smarter now; you rightfully assume all major news sources are compromised, corrupt and on the take. Eyes OPEN Citizen!

Positive #2: I guess it means I still care if they have the capacity to disappoint me.

-SenseChange
RandomMP3age: “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On” Robert Palmer