{"id":250273,"date":"2023-12-11T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2023-12-11T12:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=250273"},"modified":"2023-12-11T06:28:49","modified_gmt":"2023-12-11T06:28:49","slug":"what-times-2023-person-of-the-year-reveals-about-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/12\/what-times-2023-person-of-the-year-reveals-about-the-west\/","title":{"rendered":"What Time\u2019s 2023 Person of the Year Reveals about the West"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The cover of Time magazine announcing the 2023 Person of the Year with US singer-songwriter Taylor Swift.
\u00a9 Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin \/ TIME \/ TIME Person of the Year \/ AFP<\/p><\/div>\n

Taylor Swift\u2019s victory, and her mostly unimpressive competitors, is a PR disaster for the establishment.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

7 Dec 2023<\/em> – Each year, editors of the prestigious North American news magazine, Time<\/em>, choose a person, group, idea, or object which, for better or worse, made the most impact on the world. This year\u2019s newly crowned winner<\/a> is US singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. The choice is totally valid, for reasons that speak volumes about the current state of the Western world.<\/p>\n

\n

In a year marked by billions in Western taxpayer cash being shoveled out the door to Ukraine, Swift was the one person who made headlines for her singlehanded contributions to the US economy. At $93 million spent per show by fans, the Washington Post estimated<\/a> that her Eras tour alone could add $5.7 billion to the US economy.\u00a0That\u2019s a lot of cash-to-tax potential for a country addicted to spending. It\u2019s a wonder that last year\u2019s winner, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, hasn\u2019t yet asked for Swift to just hand the cash over to him directly \u2013 or at the very least demand that he be allowed to open for her on tour with his pantless, hands-free piano playing<\/a> routine.<\/p>\n

US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was shortlisted along with Swift, specifically for his attempts at a \u201csoft landing<\/em>\u201d of the US economy amid inflation and spending, but that particular plane is still careening down the runway. So as far as efforts to pull the economy out of a tailspin, he\u2019s apparently only really fit to be Swift\u2019s co-pilot. Or Barbie\u2019s. As in the doll. Because the Barbie movie managed to also rake in $1.4 billion worldwide for the US economy to help compensate for Washington\u2019s screwups. Maybe the Pentagon can paint some of\u00a0its bombs pink in honor of Barbie\u2019s economic contributions before sending them off to Kiev. Or just have<\/a> a giant inflatable Barbie ride them, in the style of Dr. Strangelove\u2019s Slim Pickens.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s most striking about this year\u2019s shortlist<\/a> and its ultimate winner is what it says about the weakening role of the traditional Western establishment.<\/p>\n

Hollywood writers and actors made the list for their strike against movie studios, a move that barely made a dent for the viewing audience in this era of streaming services and globalization, where libraries of millions of films and shows, old and new, from all over the world in various languages already exist at people\u2019s fingertips. There was a time when Hollywood represented the be-all and end-all of American soft power dominance. The collective audience shrug around the strike suggests that\u2019s no longer the case.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors who laid 90 felony charges against former US President Donald Trump made the list of finalists. Arguably, they\u2019re one of the very few things standing in the way of GOP frontrunner Trump\u2019s reelection next November \u2013 other than Trump himself. But the fact that it takes a whole team of people to throw the book at a single anti-establishment loose cannon \u2013 and he\u2019s still managing to trounce the Republican competition in the polls between court appearances \u2013 speaks volumes about the establishment\u2019s weakness. The fact that Trump is currently neck-and-neck with incumbent President Joe Biden despite having a recent mugshot says even more.<\/p>\n

CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, made the list, amid the drama of him being fired and then rehired when employees rebelled en masse. I guess that\u2019s supposed to make him some kind of anti-establishment hero. At the very least he\u2019s not overtly pro-establishment. But he oversees technology which, incorporated into the ChatGPT app, has allowed C-level students to automatically generate D-level papers that they mistake for A+ grades. Not exactly a tool for the kind of critical thinking that the establishment fears.<\/p>\n

The one single Western establishment leader on the shortlist, King Charles III, made the cut just for existing, basically\u00a0\u2013 and for the fact that his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, stopped doing so last year. \u201cAt a moment of change for the monarchy, he signified the power of tradition,\u201d<\/em> Time noted, referring to his \u201cdecades-long wait for the throne,\u201d<\/em> which sounds like a euphemism for an average Taylor Swift fan waiting in line for the washrooms at a concert.<\/p>\n

Finally rounding out the list, there\u2019s Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping \u2013 the only two heads of government on the list, and both spearheading a new multipolar world order. Apparently, Time had to go all the way over to the other side of the world to find leaders who could even raise eyebrows.<\/p>\n

Putin being one step away from being named Person of the Year is the exact opposite of the anti-Russian cancel culture that Ukraine and its Western establishment enablers have been trying to propagate. Some might think that it doesn\u2019t much matter because it\u2019s only PR. But PR and narrative are all they care about. They treat PR victories in Western establishment media like they\u2019re battlefield wins deep in enemy territory. And with things not going too great right now on the Ukraine counteroffensive front, PR and narrative is all they really have \u2013 and they\u2019re increasingly hanging by a thread as reality emerges through the crumbling facade.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re talking about people who invent awards to give to each other. As far as they\u2019re concerned, a PR victory in a prestigious Western establishment publication for Putin is basically a war crime against Kiev.<\/p>\n

Putin and Xi weren\u2019t the ultimate winners this time \u2013 although Putin did win in 2007 \u2013 but the fact that Putin made this list when last year it would have been unthinkably taboo suggests that the PR tide is turning. And the fact that the Western establishment is so glaringly unremarkable and feckless \u2013 as its near-absence from this year\u2019s list proves \u2013 goes a long way to suggest why.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rachel Marsden is<\/em>\u00a0a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – rt.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7 Dec 2023 – Each year, editors of Time magazine choose a person, group, idea, or object that made the most impact on the world. This year\u2019s winner is US singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. The choice is totally valid; it speaks volumes about the current state of the Western world.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":250278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[2314,1855,321],"class_list":["post-250273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-corporate-media","tag-mainstream-media-msm","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":250280,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250273\/revisions\/250280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}