You Can Take Your Cover and Shove It

The White House alleged missed out on making Time magazine’s People of the Year cover this year by refusing to grant access to the magazine’s staff. It seems Time wanted to feature the Bush-Cheney partnership as its People of the Year, but WH flaks wanted George W. to have the glory, and cover photo, all to himself. Not getting the insider view they wanted, the magazine’s editors ditched the Bush-Cheney feature for the super-hero montage of corporate/FBI whistleblower chicks. The Washington City Paper is presenting this as the story of a White House that got uppity when it should have been grateful, but it seems that for once a politician’s political handlers exercised a little restraint and dignity. Why should the President be expected to kowtow to the editorial brainstorming of a handful of magazine editors? It is as if Time is offended that the White House didn’t immediately discard their reservations when the Person of the Year honor was dangled before them. The editors seem to have come regard the POY as some sort of media-controlled Nobel Prize. It’s nothing of the kind, and hopefully being spurned by the Commander-in-Chief has given them a little perspective. Let’s not forget after all, the elite fraternity that this year’s honorees are joining – Adolf Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin (1938 and 1942), Nikita Khrushchev (1957) and the Ayatollah Khomeini (1979), to name just a few. Besides which, Bush already belongs to the POY club – he was, as the bitter partisans would say, "(s)elected" in 2000.

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