So when I was doing the Twit podcast over the weekend one of our guests, Steve Wozniak, the fabled inventor of the Apple II computer went off on various interesting tangents. The most interesting to me was the story about the Time Magazine cover in 1982 where the computer itself was named the “Man of the Year.” This was the first time an inanimate object received the “Man of the Year” award. Apparently the award was to go to Steve Jobs, according to Wozniak. And it would make some sense at the time. But the fly in the ointment, according to Woz, was Mike Moritz, a writer who was sent out to track down stories about Jobs to use in the Man of the Year article. He came back with so many horrific negative stories that they dumped Jobs at the last minute and dropped in the more sympathetic metal-silicon inanimate object. To put this in perspective, both Joseph Stalin AND Adolph Hitler were once named as Man of the Year. At least Tojo (or Pol Pot!) was never given this honor.
While astonished by Jobs allegedly getting booted based on character, I was not totally surprised. The good news: Jobs is not running Germany (or Russia or Japan).
Much of these thoughts come to mind because Bill Gates and his wife along with Bono — an arrogant rock singer with one bogus name (real name: Paul Hewson)– got some sort of combined “Men/women of the Year” award for being generous to the world. Exactly how Bono got in the same league with Gates is a mystery that only his publicist can answer. And exactly why Time Magazine calls him Bono is even more weird to me. Leave the fake stage names in Hollywood or with the pole dancers at Scores strip club.
Anyway, Gates gets one-third of an award and he’s the only one seriously doing anything real. Melinda may have egged him on, but generally the wives are not included in these deals. They are assumed to have contributed or even having been behind the whole idea. Adding her is a huge change in direction. It almost says that cheap old Bill would not have done jack if Melinda wasn’t telling him to! This is a subtle insult that Bill will never recognize. The topper insult is to add Hewson. What a laugh.
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Stage Names
Yep, not sure why Bono deserve it…
Maybe you should do a Dvorak Uncensored man of the year and announce yourself as the man of the year and come up with a new stage name while you are at it. You could share the honor with Larry and Sergei and designate Google as the (Technology of Years) and throw around new buzz called TOY. With TOY we condensed 5 years into one hour and made everybody late by 15 minutes. It’s the next big thing. You could call yourself DvOOrak and blog about HOOters girls, a subject of great value and web traffic.
It almost says that cheap old Bill would not have done jack if Melinda wasn’t telling him to!
Thereby confirming what Seattle Geekwatchers have believed for years. Before Melinda, there were persistent rumors that Bill was barely human.
John, did you bother to read the article? I don’t read Time, but I do know that Bono has put a tremendous amount of effort into debt relief for developing nations and accomplished significant concessions from world leaders, including our President.
I’m not saying he deserves the “Person(s) of the Year” moniker (a dubious honor), but I don’t think he should be summarily dismissed.
I’m a big fan of debt. Look at our country, for example.
OK, so Bono has done some good things regarding debt relief. If he wasn;t a rock and roll guy would he have gotten any attention for this? I just smell too much of a PR machine behind all this Bono stuff. Sells records and concert tickets. There is a motive. Gates’ philanthropy does not sell more software from what I see.
This remids me of the ‘word of the year’ debate that raged over the selection of ‘podcast’.
The real point of these things is that neither TIME nor the New Oxford Dictionary would have entered into most of our consciounesses if it wasn’t for these ‘of the year’ stunts. They simply do not deserve any attention unless you have nothing else to attend to; yet, both TIME and Oxford have been the recipients of lots of free publicity.
I can hear the adversising moguls saying ‘got ya’ as they count their cash.
If debt relief is all he’s done, then he doesn’t dseserve PotY, as that’s a big negative. The government handing tax money to bail out private bankers?
And here I thought they were posing for some funny iPod promotion.
Some of the previous posts indicate that the authors have little knowledge of what debt relief is being talked about. The debt relief being talked about is for third world countries that have little hope of repayment. The vicious circle of debt and inflation that these countries have to deal with is raping them of any resources that they may have. Bottom line is that the poverty stricken people of these countries pay the price. By eliminating the debt this gives a chance for the economy to recover and maybe the country can become self sufficient.
The difference between the US debt and the third world debt is that one is a book entry that has little effect on the economy other than some wealth distributions effects and the other is killing people via starvation.
I think that even if Bono is using this to further his career, at least it is a worthy cause. I am impressed that he is enlighten enough to target such a root cause of the problem. It shows that he is intelligent, or that he has someone intelligent advising him.
As for the Bill Gates comments, I think he is doing good things, but to give from wealth is not exactly the hardest thing. I don’t know how much actual time Bill invests in these causes, but that would tell me more than the dollar amount. His wife could very well be the most deserving among the three, but I do not know.
What’s the point of this post? If Time was once stupid enough to name Hitler and Stalin (and Bush) as men of the year, why care who they name as Person of the Year now or ever? And what’s wrong with calling Bono Bono? I don’t care what his real name is–what difference does it make?
And lastly, notice that it’s called the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I think it’s great that the Gates’ give away a lot of their money, but money won’t solve everything. Which is maybe why they added Bono.
Mind you, I don’t think any of them deserve it (what made them more important *this* year?), but at least it wasn’t a warmonger this time.
I think Bill’s parents had something to do with Bill’s openness to giving his money away. Gates the father has done some interesting pro bono (there’s that word again!) legal work in the past.
Gates the father (aka Gates II) refers to Young Bill as “Trey” — our Billionaire being the third of that line. I had always wondered where Trey Anastasio picked that moniker up, and now I know.
Mike
All of the insanely wealthy realize that they, or several generations of their family can’t spend that kind of money. I assume that after you buy so much stuff, things can loose their appeal. You begin to worry about a legacy, and begin to buy that instead. I would imagine that much wealth insulates you from reality. You design your little world and live in it. I don’t see how signing a check qualifies you for honors. The world was good to you, it’s only decent Karma to reciprocate.
Including Melinda gives two votes for Bill against a lessor contributor
Stalin and Hitler were very influential. Whether is was a good influence was irrelevant. They changed things in big ways. Stalin had 40 million kills alone!
When Osama rocked the world in 2001, he should have made it, but they gave it to Rudi cause it was probably safer and more palatable for the Americans. Too close to home means change the topic…
Interesting to see how Bill and Bono get more “space” in the photos, while Melinda is just a disembodied head – over Bono’s shoulder [on the cover], or floating over a globe [web page]. 🙂
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1142278,00.html
Jason, the practical effect of debt relief is what I said. People who lent the money are colledcting repayment from the US taxpayers, and are the big promoters of debt relief. The poor countries that can’t pay, have the option of not paying, ‘filing for Chapter 7’ if you will. That would make it harder to collect money in the future, but there is nothing the bankers can do about it, except maybe try and start a war over the issue. Debt relief allows the bankers to get their money back, and keep this type of lending going. In many cases the banks themselves aren’t really for profit but some sort of government agency where the bureaucracy gets a little for itself.
It’s absolutely logical that Bono is now in the same league as Stailn and Hitler! At least Bono is as big a mass murderer as both Hitler and Stalin together. He likes to buy every Wabenzi a brand new Mercedes and see all other African peple die. Shoot this bastard!