Greta Thunberg Is TIME Magazine’s Person Of The Year
Today, TIME Magazine did what they do every December, and they revealed who they chose for their annual Person of the Year issue. And it certainly wasn’t mypick Baby Yoda. Although to be fair to TIME, I should have seen this coming. After all, it’s not called the Heartbreakingly Beautiful Puppet of the Year. TIME named a person, not a puppet, and that person is 16-year-old Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg.
TIME went with one single person of the year this year, as opposed to last year (murdered or imprisoned journalists) or the year before (the silence breakers). Greta took the top spot due to the fact that she spent a good chunk of 2019 suggesting that we might need to do a little more than switch from plastic straws to save the planet. Greta beat out runner-ups that included Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump, the whistleblower responsible for the impeachment inquiry, and protesters in Hong Kong. She’s also the youngest person ever named Person of the Year in its 92 year history.
Greta launched the “Fridays for Future” protests, aka the reason why Jane Fonda keeps getting arrested on a Friday. She urged world leaders to commit to climate change action during an appearance at the UN back in September. That was the speech in which she asked, “How dare you?” to leaders for failing to step up and do something. It was a whole lot more than what I was doing at 16. I was probably also hissing, “How dare you?” at adults. But it would have been at my teachers for not giving me a two week extension on a term paper that was already six weeks overdue.
TIME also named the Public Servants (aka federal workers) as the Guardians of the Year, while Megan Rapinoie and the US Women’s Soccer Team took Athlete of the Year. Baby Yoda did make a cameo appearance with Disney CEO Bob Iger, who was named Businessperson of the Year:
Bob Iger was named Time Magazine's Businessperson of the Year https://t.co/WP50FBBpPI pic.twitter.com/ZiU2tGWyKd
— Variety (@Variety) December 11, 2019
And finally, Lizzo – who was so ubiquitous in 2019 that I bet at least half of you reading this just started singing, “I LIKE BIG BOYS, ITTY BITTY BOYS” – was named Entertainer of the Year.
Lizzo appeared in Hustlers. Lizzo got the most Grammy nominations. Lizzo got into a fight with a Postmates delivery driver. Lizzo pissed off people who accused her of plagiarism. But TIME wanted to focus on all the entertaining Lizzo did. Personally, I would say that all of the above was pretty entertaining, but they’re talking about music. And TIME obviously made their choice before Lizzo was caught shaking her thonged ass on camera at an L.A. Lakers game earlier this week. But I would not be at all surprised to learn that Lizzo was actually a runner-up until TIME saw that video and were like, “Okay that settles it – this is easily the most entertaining person of the year, no contest. Go to print!”