Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” is supposed to be someone who was the biggest change-maker of the last twelve months. It used to be “Man of the Year,” which changed to “Person of the Year,” and last year wasn’t even a specific person at all, just “You.” I found that kind of lazy, but whatever. Liz Smith wrote an article about the Person of the Year symposium which was held last week. Many – if not most – of the suggestions were for things rather than people. There was a big push for “The Environment” and green things in general, including some discussion of Al Gore, who seems to be a legitimate contender if Time wants to still have a person, but talk a lot about a subject.

Someone suggested Britney Spears, which sounds ridiculous. But no one ever said the person of the year had to be known for doing GOOD things. Case in point: Adolf Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942), and Newt Gingrich (1995). Now I’m not comparing Britney Spears to Hitler, the point is just that the person is someone who’s made a big impact, for better or worse. And Liz Smith makes a pretty good argument for Britney/celebrity crazed people in general. Plus, it’d be funny. And that doesn’t count for as much as it should with Time.

My own [vote] would be for Time again to go with a universal and not necessarily happy phenomenon… I think this year it could well cite the cataclysmic confusion, stress, worry and resulting triviality of this time affected by instant technology. There is no downtime anymore from the worship of celebrity and trash. People always wanted to be famous and to know others who were famous. But now we have a super examination of celebrity 24/7 and there is no optimism or expectation except of the next scandal. Technology in instant messaging, bloviating opinion and the Internet’s sprawling speed and ubiquity have forced real changes this last year.

Editor Rick Stengel told us that Britney Spears was one of the people who’d been suggested. Well, as horrible as that may seem, she and her many partners in celebrity, plus the money-making paparazzi, the likes of Harvey Levin’s TMZ, YouTube, MySpace could all be looked upon as an accelerating “happening.” People mad to be famous for 15 minutes and to worship others who are famous, are also affected by constantly changing methods of quick communication. They use this as a way to forget the world’s worrisome, important and serious issues.

Instant Technology for people gone “celebrity mad” is my choice as the biggest change-maker of 2007.

[From the Baltimore Sun]

It’s hard for me to tell if we really are that much more celebrity crazed than we used to be, since I do this for a living. I’m inundated with it all day long, but I can’t really tell if the rest of the world is. There are certainly still a lot of times when I’ll mention some celebrity happening and the person I’m with has no idea what I’m talking about. But more and more, when I tell people what I do, they’re much more up to date and current on gossip than I’d expect. When I mention an important trial or Barack Obama’s fantastic job on Meet the Press, I tend to be greeted with a much louder silence than when I mention Britney’s latest drug problems.

We’re experiencing an interesting shift in terms of knowledge and discussion about current events. Someone on NPR yesterday was saying that it can be directly related to the war and the economy: when people are stressed, they need to escape and have lighter things to worry about. If that’s the case, then who would ever have guessed that George Bush’s policies could be so great for Britney’s career?