UPDATE: I made this for all of you. If you have a site, post it with pride.

I think Time is making up for naming Dubya a Person of the Year, but they’ve managed to pull this one out of their bum.

Person of the Year: You
Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.

I’m still trying to decide if this is a giant kiss-ass move by Time. This award apparently was directed as all of those who partake in the internet in one way or another, so places like YouTube and Blogger are the engines of some great new society that print media has apparently just discovered. This must have been a hard thing to put to print as it’s fairly well known by bloggers that old school journalists have little respect for anyone who dares write an opinion without a journalism degree. George Will proved this hubris to a national audience again on Sunday.

WILL: It’s about narcissism, which is why a mirror is absolutely perfect. So much of what is done on the web is people getting on there and writing their diaries as though everyone ought to care about everyone’s inner turmoils. I mean it’s extraordinary.

Gee, George, don’t mix words – tell me how you really feel. Oh, and by the way, the plural of turmoil is ‘turmoil’. What is truly extraordinary is why you still appear on these television shows when you have about as much media savvy as a tortoise. Feeling a bit threatened are we?

That said I’d like to officially welcome Time Magazine, George Will and anyone else who just realized that blogs have an influence on public opinion to the information age. While it’s nice to finally be recognized by the great media conglomerates as being somehow relevant, I can’t help but wonder why it took you so goddamned long to notice. I’m sorry if I’m not as gracious a winner as I should be, but for the love of God I’ve been blogging in one form or another since 2001 and I came late to this party. I’ve been reading blogs before they were known as blogs. Georgie-boy, that’s how us regular folk converse outside of academia. I’m sorry that you perceive that you lost your relevance and act like a spoiled child now that we regular folk have a bona fide voice. Just a guess: You’re all for the two-tiered internet, aren’t you?

Okay, I’m sorry that I’m being this way, but George Will’s childish reaction really set me off because I know it’s not just his childish reaction but that of the old journalism school of thought. Regular people aren’t allowed to publish their comments without going through a thorough editorial process according to the dinosaurs. And there is something to be said for 10,000 voices muddying a discussion to something resembling pudding. But this is the new technology and the information age needs to redefine how people can process all this information. If anything, I welcome this because it forces people to learn how to converse not only with the neighbor across the street, but across the globe. Americans learn a bit more about how arrogant they’re perceived by the rest of the world and the rest of the world realizes that not everyone in America is as clinically stupid as George W. Bush or as much of a Luddite as George Will.

I’m sure that by the time I reach the age of 60 that there will be some new fan-dangled contraption that I’ll be opposed to because it encroaches on what I perceive as the best means of communication. But if my kids or my grandkids understand it then perhaps I’ll have the wisdom to keep my old-fashioned mouth shut and learn to deal with it.