Person of the Year
In 2006 Time Magazine chose me as Person of the Year. “No joke,” as Joe Biden, another person of the year says. Okay, Time didn’t name me specifically. Instead, they called me “You.” Hmmnnn. I guess that includes you if you ever contributed to a website, maybe just a little comment in some chatroom. All right, so Time chose a bunch of us as person of the year. I hope the fame and adulation that accompanies the designation hasn’t interrupted your life, hasn’t sent you into disguise just to avoid the rabid paparazzi. So far, I’ve been able to go to the grocery store and on vacation without being recognized for my prestigious Time award, although, occasionally, someone out of the 18,000 college students I lectured over four decades comes up to me and says, “Hey, I think you taught me in college in the late sixties” or, “Professor Conte, I was a student of yours.” Fame: Once you have it, it’s like skunk spray.
Back in 2011 Time’s person of the year was “The Protestor.” And then in 2019, it chose a specific protestor.
The 2019 Award
In 2019 Time magazine’s editors chose a 16-year-old climate activist as its Person of the Year. It was, as all previous choices were, a move to increase circulation and a means to announce that Time was still relevant, still up to the times, so to speak. The selection of Greta Thunberg enhanced her fame and increased the adulation heaped on her. Unlike me—and maybe you—Greta is recognized almost everywhere she goes.
Among those editors in 2019, was Edward Felsenthal, Time’s Editor-in-Chief, the man who penned the logic behind the choice. Greta, he wrote, had been a galvanizing force, a child who inspired millions across the planet, a little girl many world leaders, like the UN Secretary General and the Pope, met in a photo op in sympathy for her cause. She was a worldwide “influencer.” Here’s a sentence from Felsenthal’s justification:
“Meaningful change rarely happens without the galvanizing force of influential individuals, and in 2019, the earth’s existential crisis found one in Greta Thunberg."
Remind you of any other young girls who amassed an ardent set of followers? (Please don’t say Brittany Spears, Taylor Swift, or Beyonce) I’m thinking Joan of Arc.
The Claim and the Girl
That Edward Felsenthal included the phrase “existential crisis” is an indication that he lay in the camp of Greta, Earth’s champion. The phrase implies acceptance of the premise that global warming will do us all in, and not just us, but all species as Admiral Kirby recently said in an interview as he also voiced the phrase and echoed POTUS.
For the moment, consider Felsenthal’s “the earth’s existential crisis.” Obviously, the editors of Time took hook, line, and sinker the mantra of the climate change activists. They accepted, as evidenced by his using the phrase, the “unquestioned”—unquestionable?—assessment of the mythical “97% of scientists” that derived initially from an article by Naomi Oreskes (2004) and another survey that Al Gore turned into the consensus on anthropogenic warming. The sequence of all the above led to the claim that we were in the midst of or on the cusp of a self-imposed “existential crisis.” * This was—and still is, apparently--the paradigm under which Greta Thunberg lived her childhood, teen years, and current young adulthood; it is the paradigm under which Time’s editors selected her.
97%?
In the year that “The Protestor” was person of the year, Peter T. Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman ** published the results of their survey of 10,257 “earth scientists” on the subject of global warming. Some 3,146 of them responded to the two-item survey. The researchers asked:
1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
First, I’ll do some math for you: 3,146 does not—I repeat, class, NOT—equal 10,257, even under the New Math. So, the percentages derived from the respondents aren’t percentages of all recipients of the survey.
Second, I’ll note that the word significant was undefined.
Third, I’ll direct your attention: There was NO mention of carbon dioxide.
Fourth: I want you to realize that of those respondents, 79 said they were experts or specialists in climate change, with 76 of them saying that temperature had risen since the end of the Little Ice Age and 75 saying “yes” to the second question. With regard to the second question, of the 103 economic geologists (mining, I suppose), 48 of 103 said “yes,” and 23 of 36 meteorologists said “yes.”
Fifth: The questions were simple: Did warming occur since the eighteenth century? Were humans involved? Who knows what lay in the minds of those respondents when they answered. Could they have been thinking of denuding the land, farming, impounding water, or urbanization—especially urbanization and its accompanying heat islands? Were they thinking carbon dioxide? Methane? Solar activity? Volcanism beneath the ocean surface and the ice sheets of Antarctica?
Thus, the “existential threat” mantra is not—NOT—97% of scientists. And even if it were, the question remains about the term “scientists,” since some such surveys have included social scientists. Note also, that climate, as I have recently pointed out, has its vicissitudes, is variable over the planet, and falls under different classification schemes that include information on evapotranspiration, precipitation, temperature, vegetation, and season. It matters, for example, when a “rainy” season occurs—especially for those who plan a vacation. It matters whether or not a region has a cool summer and cold winter, a warm summer and a cool winter, or a year round even temperature. It matters whether or not a region lies in the influence of prevailing wind systems, large cyclonic pressure systems, or coastal regions with offshore cold or warm currents.
And Greta. Well, she’s twenty right now, so she was a baby when Oreskes released her survey and a five-year-old when Al Gore received his Nobel. She grew up in a world inundated by climate change talk. She grew up under the aegis of the 97% myth and the existential threat mantra. And since her mid teens, she has been the center of adulation. “The kid who saved the world,” the modern Joan of Arc.
Why have I said the above? Am I some guy intent on bullying a young woman? Am I envious of her fame? Or am I about to compare Greta’s selection as person of the year to Time’s selection of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Ruhollah Khomeini, and Yassar Arafat?
Remember that Time’s selection centers on “newsmakers,” not necessarily on any judgment about the news they make. Stalin was a newsmaker because he defeated the Germans at Stalingrad. That he sacrificed Russian soldiers in head-on onslaughts seemed not to matter. Russia won the battle while suffering 1,129,619 total casualties, some 478,741 of them killed or missing and 650,878 wounded. And Stalin was a WWII ally of America where an America-centric Time was published. Hitler received the designation Man of the Year in 1938, just before he began his invasions and his death camps. Under Khomeini, Iran held American hostages. And Arafat? One could say that he was not shy about sacrificing Palestinians as human bombs. Just keep in mind that “person of the year” means “newsmaker.”
Greta Now, Felsenthal, Just Four Years Later
No. I have no intention of bullying St. Greta. I mention all the above persons of the year as one context for the 2019 Time acknowledgement of Greta as Person of the Year, a newsmaker for her galvanizing the planet in the name of “science” and for the sake of saving the planet from the “existential threat.”
But with time Time’s persons can change; or information about them once unknown becomes known; hidden character, policy, belief, or shortcomings will out themselves because persons of the year are like all of us, somewhat flawed. The world sparing judgment at the time of the selection will not spare it with new revelations. Keep in mind, also, that YOU were once person of the year, sharing that designation with me.
I wouldn’t have access to ask him, but I’m wondering whether or not Edward Felsenthal has seen Greta’s antisemitic photo. I wonder whether it bothers him that she has posted an image that will galvanize the world against Israel, Jews, and possibly his family. Felsenthal is Jewish. Will the editors of Time select her as a two-time Person of the Year, the Heisman of Social Influence, the newsmaker of 2023? Isn’t she more influential today than she was in 2019? Hasn’t her renown spread to every nook and cranny with the intrusiveness of WD-40 lubricant? Think of all the children and young adults she now influences, maybe numbering in the tens of millions, maybe in the hundreds of millions, certainly more than she influenced before her selection. And many of those followers have seen her posing with a symbol of antisemitism.
Unintentional or Not, All Our Actions Carry a Message and Reveal Character
So, Greta took down the photo with the antisemitic symbol and posted a new one with a similar message about freeing the Palestinians with the implication that Israelis had imprisoned them. Apparently, her world of followers saw the original. Her world of followers who saw the original probably did not see the second photo. Retractions rarely receive the attention the original gets, front page vs. page 16 bottom right corner. Plus, Greta seems to have made no effort to correct the image until after the storm of criticism hit social media.
As a young adult coming out of her whirlwind teenage years during which she met with world leaders, including the UN Secretary General and the Pope, flew across and sailed across the Atlantic, traveled to numerous countries, and led protests against fossil fuels, Greta is giving me, if not her followers, pause about her erudition. If she didn’t realize she was posting an antisemitic image that might result—if it hasn’t already done so—in injury and death among the world’s Jewish population or at least exacerbated tensions, then what else was missing in that committed brain of hers? What else hasn’t she realized?
Did a panic-stricken little teen get the Person of the Year designation because of her adult-imposed anxiety about “the existential threat”? Did the child who probably did no scientific research or read no scientific journals with an analytical eye on their import and relevance, did that child become a worldwide influencer while living in a state of relative ignorance about the “science” she proclaimed?
If I Could Administer a Climate Test
I would like to see Greta take college-level tests in atmospheric physics and chemistry. I would like to see her explain what climate is, how it became a classification scheme, how sundry interconnected Earth phenomena produce Earth’s climates, and how various climatologists have argued for or against the different classification schemes. I want to see what she knows about those classification schemes, also. Does she, for example, understand that a tropical rainforest climate differs from a tropical monsoonal climate and a tropical savanna? Can she explain how a “Mediterranean climate” prevails in places other than the Mediterranean? Does she see that some climate designations vary by emphasis on descriptive phenomena like vegetation, rainfall, and season of precipitation? “Tropical rainforest” and “tropical savanna” place the emphasis on vegetation in their name, whereas “tropical monsoonal” places emphasis on a rainy or stormy period. See, even the climatologists—the ones who made the classification schemes—aren’t completely consistent. Should we look at precipitation and temperature, both plus vegetation, or evapotranspiration potential? Some other parameter?
If I Could Administer a History Test
I would like to see Greta explain how the Palestinians and Israelis became “enemies.” Does she know, for example, that the two groups are genetically related—closely related? That’s the claim by James Watson in his book published on the 50th anniversary of his and Francis Crick’s discovery of the double helix.*** Does she know of the many attempts Israelis have made to appease their “brothers and sisters” in the Middle East? Does she know the various wars fought in the region? The history of Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights? Is she aware of the genocide that is the only goal toward which Hamas strives? Does she know that to achieve that goal, Hamas butchers were high on amphetamines as Hitler’s blitzkrieg soldiers were in 1939? Did she ever go to a WWII concentration camp? Has she any sense of the difference between the democracy of Israel and the tyranny of terror in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, and southern Lebanon? Did she ever see an Israeli soldier use the innocent as shields as Hamas does? Has she ever walked among the corpses of those her age slaughtered by Hamas?
Time’s Policy; Felsenthal’s Consequence
I suppose Time’s selection of a notable newsmaker has no promise for mankind (peoplekind? personkind?). So-n-So makes news. Time reports news. End of story.
But all that we do breeds consequences of some kind, as Chaos Theory suggests. Elevating any one of us eight billion flawed humans to a state of prominence because we somehow garnered attention by acts good, evil, and neutral, can have unintended consequences. Greta has followers because Time elevated her. Maybe all of her followers are simply obsessed with the “existential threat” mantra. But some might have evil in them. Some might just need a little assurance that some famous person believes as they believe, hates as they hate, seeks control as they seek control.
In 2019 Felsenthal could not have foreseen Greta’s recent antisemitic post. But he could have seen that the young newsmaker had little knowledge other than what she had been told. In his justification of her selection, he might have noted that St. Greta, the climate warriors’ modern Joan of Arc, had no scientific training, little knowledge of earth history, and only a dubious mantra of existential threat behind her burgeoning fame.
We Make Our Idols by Reductionist Thinking
Let’s not blame St. Greta for her following. This is what many people do: Follow. And it’s on the shoulders of those who follow that the idol rides. We make our idols; we hold them high, sometimes even when we know their shortcomings and faults, sometimes even when we know their inner evil because it manifests itself in something like the Holocaust. Seeing German Jews swept off the streets, did the German people rise up against Hitler or gather in throngs to sing him praise?
I remember my mother’s making a comment on some Hollywood personality years ago. I responded, “Who cares? Aren’t people just people?” I meant no disrespect to my mother an intelligent, but self-educated woman who had dropped out of school to help her parents raise a large family during the Depression, but I couldn’t see a reason for heightened fame and interest in a personal life just because someone I never met and would never meet acted in a movie. Why, I might add in this 2023 NFL season, does anyone outside the Kelce and Swift families care about who’s dating whom? Do I have favorite actors and actresses? Sure. Do I idolize them? No. I can watch a good actor act without associating the real with the fiction. I can watch with admiration the performance of someone whose political or ethical views differ from my own. If I borrow from T. S. Eliot’s words, I exhibit a type of dissociation of sensibility. I don’t care that Actor So-n-So lives in a mansion or supports a socialist; I watch ars gratis artis. Am I motivated by simple envy that I am not specifically named a person of the year instead of being lumped together with you and everyone else who ever made an online comment as we both were in 2006? No. I just prefer my humans to be human, not idols.
Choosing a person of the year involves mixing a little of the fiction with the real. Since we humans respond to first impressions more than we do to retractions of those impressions, the elevated become enmeshed in the common psyche of those willing to idolize. Hyperbole surfaces and accrues a meaning that substitutes for reality. A child becomes a leader of adults. St. Greta influences from her lofty perch. Little kids are led on a thirteenth-century-like crusade without realizing they’ll be victims of their enthusiastic idolatry when as adults their electric bills come due, their electric grid can’t supply them with power, and their internal combustion and electric vehicles lie rusting for want of gasoline and electricity. And in the meantime and on the social scene, antisemitism will continue both consciously and unconsciously, terrorists will be rewarded and praised, and the innocent on all sides of issues will be victimized.
When you see Time’s next person of the year, remember the justification for the selection isn’t predicated on anything more than newsworthiness.
*Forget the eruption of Toba, the plagues, the endless wars, and the threat of nuclear annihilation; in the minds of climate activists, all of them pale by comparison to the rise of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius—but, as usual, I digress.
**Doran and Zimmerman. 3 Jun 2011. Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. EOS. https://doi.org/10.1029/2009EO030002 Accessed October 21, 2023. The two-page article (22,23) is online at https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II13/20190522/109519/HHRG-116-II13-20190522-SD004.PDF
***I apologize for not giving you the page reference. I lost or lent my copy of the book DNA: The Secret of Life by James D. Watson and Andrew Berry. It’s an interesting tale in which Watson notes the genetic similarity of Palestinians and Jews and the great genetic diversity in Queens, New York City. Definitely, it’s worth a read though it doesn’t give Rosalind Franklin the credit I believe she deserves for her role in the discovery of DNA’s double helix structure.
In 2006 Time Magazine chose me as Person of the Year. “No joke,” as Joe Biden, another person of the year says. Okay, Time didn’t name me specifically. Instead, they called me “You.” Hmmnnn. I guess that includes you if you ever contributed to a website, maybe just a little comment in some chatroom. All right, so Time chose a bunch of us as person of the year. I hope the fame and adulation that accompanies the designation hasn’t interrupted your life, hasn’t sent you into disguise just to avoid the rabid paparazzi. So far, I’ve been able to go to the grocery store and on vacation without being recognized for my prestigious Time award, although, occasionally, someone out of the 18,000 college students I lectured over four decades comes up to me and says, “Hey, I think you taught me in college in the late sixties” or, “Professor Conte, I was a student of yours.” Fame: Once you have it, it’s like skunk spray.
Back in 2011 Time’s person of the year was “The Protestor.” And then in 2019, it chose a specific protestor.
The 2019 Award
In 2019 Time magazine’s editors chose a 16-year-old climate activist as its Person of the Year. It was, as all previous choices were, a move to increase circulation and a means to announce that Time was still relevant, still up to the times, so to speak. The selection of Greta Thunberg enhanced her fame and increased the adulation heaped on her. Unlike me—and maybe you—Greta is recognized almost everywhere she goes.
Among those editors in 2019, was Edward Felsenthal, Time’s Editor-in-Chief, the man who penned the logic behind the choice. Greta, he wrote, had been a galvanizing force, a child who inspired millions across the planet, a little girl many world leaders, like the UN Secretary General and the Pope, met in a photo op in sympathy for her cause. She was a worldwide “influencer.” Here’s a sentence from Felsenthal’s justification:
“Meaningful change rarely happens without the galvanizing force of influential individuals, and in 2019, the earth’s existential crisis found one in Greta Thunberg."
Remind you of any other young girls who amassed an ardent set of followers? (Please don’t say Brittany Spears, Taylor Swift, or Beyonce) I’m thinking Joan of Arc.
The Claim and the Girl
That Edward Felsenthal included the phrase “existential crisis” is an indication that he lay in the camp of Greta, Earth’s champion. The phrase implies acceptance of the premise that global warming will do us all in, and not just us, but all species as Admiral Kirby recently said in an interview as he also voiced the phrase and echoed POTUS.
For the moment, consider Felsenthal’s “the earth’s existential crisis.” Obviously, the editors of Time took hook, line, and sinker the mantra of the climate change activists. They accepted, as evidenced by his using the phrase, the “unquestioned”—unquestionable?—assessment of the mythical “97% of scientists” that derived initially from an article by Naomi Oreskes (2004) and another survey that Al Gore turned into the consensus on anthropogenic warming. The sequence of all the above led to the claim that we were in the midst of or on the cusp of a self-imposed “existential crisis.” * This was—and still is, apparently--the paradigm under which Greta Thunberg lived her childhood, teen years, and current young adulthood; it is the paradigm under which Time’s editors selected her.
97%?
In the year that “The Protestor” was person of the year, Peter T. Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman ** published the results of their survey of 10,257 “earth scientists” on the subject of global warming. Some 3,146 of them responded to the two-item survey. The researchers asked:
1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
First, I’ll do some math for you: 3,146 does not—I repeat, class, NOT—equal 10,257, even under the New Math. So, the percentages derived from the respondents aren’t percentages of all recipients of the survey.
Second, I’ll note that the word significant was undefined.
Third, I’ll direct your attention: There was NO mention of carbon dioxide.
Fourth: I want you to realize that of those respondents, 79 said they were experts or specialists in climate change, with 76 of them saying that temperature had risen since the end of the Little Ice Age and 75 saying “yes” to the second question. With regard to the second question, of the 103 economic geologists (mining, I suppose), 48 of 103 said “yes,” and 23 of 36 meteorologists said “yes.”
Fifth: The questions were simple: Did warming occur since the eighteenth century? Were humans involved? Who knows what lay in the minds of those respondents when they answered. Could they have been thinking of denuding the land, farming, impounding water, or urbanization—especially urbanization and its accompanying heat islands? Were they thinking carbon dioxide? Methane? Solar activity? Volcanism beneath the ocean surface and the ice sheets of Antarctica?
Thus, the “existential threat” mantra is not—NOT—97% of scientists. And even if it were, the question remains about the term “scientists,” since some such surveys have included social scientists. Note also, that climate, as I have recently pointed out, has its vicissitudes, is variable over the planet, and falls under different classification schemes that include information on evapotranspiration, precipitation, temperature, vegetation, and season. It matters, for example, when a “rainy” season occurs—especially for those who plan a vacation. It matters whether or not a region has a cool summer and cold winter, a warm summer and a cool winter, or a year round even temperature. It matters whether or not a region lies in the influence of prevailing wind systems, large cyclonic pressure systems, or coastal regions with offshore cold or warm currents.
And Greta. Well, she’s twenty right now, so she was a baby when Oreskes released her survey and a five-year-old when Al Gore received his Nobel. She grew up in a world inundated by climate change talk. She grew up under the aegis of the 97% myth and the existential threat mantra. And since her mid teens, she has been the center of adulation. “The kid who saved the world,” the modern Joan of Arc.
Why have I said the above? Am I some guy intent on bullying a young woman? Am I envious of her fame? Or am I about to compare Greta’s selection as person of the year to Time’s selection of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Ruhollah Khomeini, and Yassar Arafat?
Remember that Time’s selection centers on “newsmakers,” not necessarily on any judgment about the news they make. Stalin was a newsmaker because he defeated the Germans at Stalingrad. That he sacrificed Russian soldiers in head-on onslaughts seemed not to matter. Russia won the battle while suffering 1,129,619 total casualties, some 478,741 of them killed or missing and 650,878 wounded. And Stalin was a WWII ally of America where an America-centric Time was published. Hitler received the designation Man of the Year in 1938, just before he began his invasions and his death camps. Under Khomeini, Iran held American hostages. And Arafat? One could say that he was not shy about sacrificing Palestinians as human bombs. Just keep in mind that “person of the year” means “newsmaker.”
Greta Now, Felsenthal, Just Four Years Later
No. I have no intention of bullying St. Greta. I mention all the above persons of the year as one context for the 2019 Time acknowledgement of Greta as Person of the Year, a newsmaker for her galvanizing the planet in the name of “science” and for the sake of saving the planet from the “existential threat.”
But with time Time’s persons can change; or information about them once unknown becomes known; hidden character, policy, belief, or shortcomings will out themselves because persons of the year are like all of us, somewhat flawed. The world sparing judgment at the time of the selection will not spare it with new revelations. Keep in mind, also, that YOU were once person of the year, sharing that designation with me.
I wouldn’t have access to ask him, but I’m wondering whether or not Edward Felsenthal has seen Greta’s antisemitic photo. I wonder whether it bothers him that she has posted an image that will galvanize the world against Israel, Jews, and possibly his family. Felsenthal is Jewish. Will the editors of Time select her as a two-time Person of the Year, the Heisman of Social Influence, the newsmaker of 2023? Isn’t she more influential today than she was in 2019? Hasn’t her renown spread to every nook and cranny with the intrusiveness of WD-40 lubricant? Think of all the children and young adults she now influences, maybe numbering in the tens of millions, maybe in the hundreds of millions, certainly more than she influenced before her selection. And many of those followers have seen her posing with a symbol of antisemitism.
Unintentional or Not, All Our Actions Carry a Message and Reveal Character
So, Greta took down the photo with the antisemitic symbol and posted a new one with a similar message about freeing the Palestinians with the implication that Israelis had imprisoned them. Apparently, her world of followers saw the original. Her world of followers who saw the original probably did not see the second photo. Retractions rarely receive the attention the original gets, front page vs. page 16 bottom right corner. Plus, Greta seems to have made no effort to correct the image until after the storm of criticism hit social media.
As a young adult coming out of her whirlwind teenage years during which she met with world leaders, including the UN Secretary General and the Pope, flew across and sailed across the Atlantic, traveled to numerous countries, and led protests against fossil fuels, Greta is giving me, if not her followers, pause about her erudition. If she didn’t realize she was posting an antisemitic image that might result—if it hasn’t already done so—in injury and death among the world’s Jewish population or at least exacerbated tensions, then what else was missing in that committed brain of hers? What else hasn’t she realized?
Did a panic-stricken little teen get the Person of the Year designation because of her adult-imposed anxiety about “the existential threat”? Did the child who probably did no scientific research or read no scientific journals with an analytical eye on their import and relevance, did that child become a worldwide influencer while living in a state of relative ignorance about the “science” she proclaimed?
If I Could Administer a Climate Test
I would like to see Greta take college-level tests in atmospheric physics and chemistry. I would like to see her explain what climate is, how it became a classification scheme, how sundry interconnected Earth phenomena produce Earth’s climates, and how various climatologists have argued for or against the different classification schemes. I want to see what she knows about those classification schemes, also. Does she, for example, understand that a tropical rainforest climate differs from a tropical monsoonal climate and a tropical savanna? Can she explain how a “Mediterranean climate” prevails in places other than the Mediterranean? Does she see that some climate designations vary by emphasis on descriptive phenomena like vegetation, rainfall, and season of precipitation? “Tropical rainforest” and “tropical savanna” place the emphasis on vegetation in their name, whereas “tropical monsoonal” places emphasis on a rainy or stormy period. See, even the climatologists—the ones who made the classification schemes—aren’t completely consistent. Should we look at precipitation and temperature, both plus vegetation, or evapotranspiration potential? Some other parameter?
If I Could Administer a History Test
I would like to see Greta explain how the Palestinians and Israelis became “enemies.” Does she know, for example, that the two groups are genetically related—closely related? That’s the claim by James Watson in his book published on the 50th anniversary of his and Francis Crick’s discovery of the double helix.*** Does she know of the many attempts Israelis have made to appease their “brothers and sisters” in the Middle East? Does she know the various wars fought in the region? The history of Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights? Is she aware of the genocide that is the only goal toward which Hamas strives? Does she know that to achieve that goal, Hamas butchers were high on amphetamines as Hitler’s blitzkrieg soldiers were in 1939? Did she ever go to a WWII concentration camp? Has she any sense of the difference between the democracy of Israel and the tyranny of terror in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, and southern Lebanon? Did she ever see an Israeli soldier use the innocent as shields as Hamas does? Has she ever walked among the corpses of those her age slaughtered by Hamas?
Time’s Policy; Felsenthal’s Consequence
I suppose Time’s selection of a notable newsmaker has no promise for mankind (peoplekind? personkind?). So-n-So makes news. Time reports news. End of story.
But all that we do breeds consequences of some kind, as Chaos Theory suggests. Elevating any one of us eight billion flawed humans to a state of prominence because we somehow garnered attention by acts good, evil, and neutral, can have unintended consequences. Greta has followers because Time elevated her. Maybe all of her followers are simply obsessed with the “existential threat” mantra. But some might have evil in them. Some might just need a little assurance that some famous person believes as they believe, hates as they hate, seeks control as they seek control.
In 2019 Felsenthal could not have foreseen Greta’s recent antisemitic post. But he could have seen that the young newsmaker had little knowledge other than what she had been told. In his justification of her selection, he might have noted that St. Greta, the climate warriors’ modern Joan of Arc, had no scientific training, little knowledge of earth history, and only a dubious mantra of existential threat behind her burgeoning fame.
We Make Our Idols by Reductionist Thinking
Let’s not blame St. Greta for her following. This is what many people do: Follow. And it’s on the shoulders of those who follow that the idol rides. We make our idols; we hold them high, sometimes even when we know their shortcomings and faults, sometimes even when we know their inner evil because it manifests itself in something like the Holocaust. Seeing German Jews swept off the streets, did the German people rise up against Hitler or gather in throngs to sing him praise?
I remember my mother’s making a comment on some Hollywood personality years ago. I responded, “Who cares? Aren’t people just people?” I meant no disrespect to my mother an intelligent, but self-educated woman who had dropped out of school to help her parents raise a large family during the Depression, but I couldn’t see a reason for heightened fame and interest in a personal life just because someone I never met and would never meet acted in a movie. Why, I might add in this 2023 NFL season, does anyone outside the Kelce and Swift families care about who’s dating whom? Do I have favorite actors and actresses? Sure. Do I idolize them? No. I can watch a good actor act without associating the real with the fiction. I can watch with admiration the performance of someone whose political or ethical views differ from my own. If I borrow from T. S. Eliot’s words, I exhibit a type of dissociation of sensibility. I don’t care that Actor So-n-So lives in a mansion or supports a socialist; I watch ars gratis artis. Am I motivated by simple envy that I am not specifically named a person of the year instead of being lumped together with you and everyone else who ever made an online comment as we both were in 2006? No. I just prefer my humans to be human, not idols.
Choosing a person of the year involves mixing a little of the fiction with the real. Since we humans respond to first impressions more than we do to retractions of those impressions, the elevated become enmeshed in the common psyche of those willing to idolize. Hyperbole surfaces and accrues a meaning that substitutes for reality. A child becomes a leader of adults. St. Greta influences from her lofty perch. Little kids are led on a thirteenth-century-like crusade without realizing they’ll be victims of their enthusiastic idolatry when as adults their electric bills come due, their electric grid can’t supply them with power, and their internal combustion and electric vehicles lie rusting for want of gasoline and electricity. And in the meantime and on the social scene, antisemitism will continue both consciously and unconsciously, terrorists will be rewarded and praised, and the innocent on all sides of issues will be victimized.
When you see Time’s next person of the year, remember the justification for the selection isn’t predicated on anything more than newsworthiness.
*Forget the eruption of Toba, the plagues, the endless wars, and the threat of nuclear annihilation; in the minds of climate activists, all of them pale by comparison to the rise of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius—but, as usual, I digress.
**Doran and Zimmerman. 3 Jun 2011. Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. EOS. https://doi.org/10.1029/2009EO030002 Accessed October 21, 2023. The two-page article (22,23) is online at https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II13/20190522/109519/HHRG-116-II13-20190522-SD004.PDF
***I apologize for not giving you the page reference. I lost or lent my copy of the book DNA: The Secret of Life by James D. Watson and Andrew Berry. It’s an interesting tale in which Watson notes the genetic similarity of Palestinians and Jews and the great genetic diversity in Queens, New York City. Definitely, it’s worth a read though it doesn’t give Rosalind Franklin the credit I believe she deserves for her role in the discovery of DNA’s double helix structure.
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