I don't get why so many people who don't believe a word published in Time magazine care so much about who they put on their cover one week a year.
The publication has always made it very clear that the selection as "Person of the Year" (formerly — and changed for good reason — "Man of the Year") is of someone (not necessarily a human being) that "for better or for worse…has done the most to influence the events of the year." The list of those so designated has included Joseph Stalin (twice), Nikita Khrushchev, the Ayatollah Khomeini and the man to whom no sane person wants to be compared…Adolf Hitler. Would you like to see your name on a list that includes those fellows?
I sure wouldn't but some people have apparently decided to regard it as a list of the Best or Most Wonderful Person of the previous twelve months. Then and only then can they be outraged if their fave doesn't adorn the front of this magazine for which they already had no respect. Donald Trump is so upset he wasn't their pick this time that he began attacking the sixteen-year-old girl who was.
I can't find the words right now to describe how poorly that speaks of the president. Just imagine what Mike Huckabee would say if Obama felt the need to bad-mouth a high school student…then substitute "Trump" for "Obama." Our current prez also once reportedly had a fake Time cover, showing him as their Person of the Year long before he really was, on display in one of his resorts.
Almost everything Trump does lowers my opinion of him as a leader and/or a human being. The ones that are primarily the latter are kinda fascinating in their own way since they parallel so many foolish, petty things we see done or said by people who aren't President of the United States, Commander-in-Chief of the United States military, very wealthy, very much admired by many and — perhaps arguably — The Most Powerful Person in the World. You'd think that would be enough for anybody, wouldn't you?
But no…he has to make a pissy remark to a teenager who is engaged in a non-profitable effort to make the world a little better for everyone to live in. Something is seriously wrong there and it isn't with Greta Thunberg. To attack someone like that, you've got to have a real problem with the selflessness of others.
On a vastly smaller (but similar) scale, I encounter people like this in the entertainment business…and yes, I'm including comic books in that category. Every so often, you run into someone who is by any reasonable scale, very prosperous and very honored. I'm talking about someone who has plenty of fame, plenty of fortune and a career that has given them about 98% of everything they could ever have imagined.
And instead of luxuriating in all the good that's come to them, they're absolutely furious about that 2%. They have somehow learned to be successful but not how to be happy. Worse, they've convinced themselves that the contentment that's eluded them will be theirs if only they can attain that unattainable 2%. If you're generally satisfied with anything in your life — your job, your mate, your family, your home, your bank account, your fame, your honors, your blood pressure, your sex life, your Groo the Wanderer collection — any of those — you might just be way ahead of a lot of people you think are doing better than you are. That is to say you might be a happier person.