Is Time magazine basically just a front for global evil? Nah. Such as? Among others, Ayatollah Khomeni (1979), Joseph Stalin (19) and Adolf Hitler (1938). Hitler became in 1938 the greatest threatening force that the democratic, freedom-loving world faces today, TIME wrote. Although they have chosen stranger candidates in the past. Even when the relevant magazine issue was published in January 1939, TIME’s selection of Hitler as the Man of the Year was far from laudatory.
1939 time magazine man of the year free#
The editors are free to ignore it when they make the magazine's official choice. But the Time biography did acknowledge that.Īnd they still felt he was a suitable candidate for a poll to find the person of the year? Sure, why not? It's just the readers' poll, after all. Really? Well, only according to China's People Daily newspaper, which mistook a joke in The Onion for a news report.Īny plausible reasons? Because he had a big year he tightened his grip on power in North Korea, improved his bargaining position with China and the US, and last Wednesday launched the country's first successful satellite rocket.Īnd I'm as delighted about that as anyone, but – big year or not – isn't he also the brutal and repressive dictator of an abhorrent authoritarian regime? Oh, well, yes. Why exactly? Maybe because he had already been voted the sexiest man alive. How come they were able to vote for him at all? He was one of 40 possible candidates put forward by Time's editors. What happened? Users of online messageboard 4Chan hijacked the poll and sent Kim Jong-un, as he would put it, "onwards toward the final victory". He beat the second most popular candidate, US satirist Jon Stewart, by more than three million votes. Kim Jong-un was just voted Time magazine readers' person of the year. A Supreme Leader is better than a normal leader.ĭo we have any evidence for that? We do now. As in the leader of North Korea? No, as in the Supreme Leader of North Korea.