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| A Kashmiri elderly man carries his wife on his back on Neelum
Valley road, which was heavily damaged by the October 8 earthquake,
in Dunga, north of Muzaffarabad, the capital of
Pakistan-administered Kashmir, about 130km (82 miles) north of
Islamabad November 5, 2005. (REUTERS) |
Time magazine's annual "Person of the Year" for 2005 may not be a
person at all.
Mother Nature topped the unofficial list of nominees at a panel
discussion held on Monday by the weekly magazine to debate who will grace
the cover of the issue that hits newsstands on December 19.
The choice is supposed to remain a secret until December 18, when it
will be disclosed on the magazine's Web site, but it does become a parlour
game in America to ponder who fits the criteria as "the person or persons
who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill, and
embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse."
Mother Nature -- encompassing natural disasters from the Asian tsunami
to Hurricane Katrina and the Pakistan earthquake -- evokes issues ranging
from presidential politics to race to oil to infrastructure and
leadership, said NBC news anchor Brian Williams, one of the panellists
gathered to debate the annual selection.
"It has laid bare so many
cracks and fissures in our system," he said.
Other suggestions included so-called first responders to emergencies;
Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, commander of military relief operations after
Katrina; Jordanian-born Abu Musab al Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq;
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Microsoft Corp. founder Bill
Gates for the money he has donated to fight malaria; and J.K. Rowling,
author of the Harry Potter books.
The person of the year is not always a person. Time selected "The
American Soldier" in 2003, the "Endangered Earth" in 1988 and "The 25 and
Under Generation" in 1966.
The tradition grew out of an editorial embarrassment in 1927 when Time
failed to put pilot Charles Lindbergh on its cover after his historic solo
trans-Atlantic flight. At the end of that year, the editors decided to
make him man of the year to remedy the oversight.
Some selections have been notoriously unpopular with Time readers, such
as Adolf Hitler in 1938. Time's 2004 Person of the Year was U.S. President
George W. Bush.
(Agencies) |
美國《時代》周刊2005年的年度人物可能壓根不是一個人。
本周一，《時代》周刊舉行了年度人物提名小組討論會，會上討論了誰將成為12月19日出版的《時代》周刊的封面人物，大自然母親在非正式候選者名單中名列榜首。
12月18日之前，年度人物的人選將一直保密。屆時，結果將公布在《時代》雜志的網站上，但廣大美國民眾都會熱衷于猜測到底誰符合當選的要求，“當選者應該是本年度對新聞和人們生活影響最大的人，不管這種影響是好是壞，而且他也最能體現當年發生的重要事件，無論是好是壞。”
大自然母親制造了各種自然災害，從亞洲海嘯到卡特里娜颶風，再到巴基斯坦地震，引起了方方面面的變化，從總統的種族政策、石油到基礎設施和領導能力，美國國家廣播公司新聞主播布賴恩·威廉姆斯說，他是年度評選小組的成員之一。
“她暴露了我們整個體系中存在的許多缺陷和裂痕，”他說。
其他候選人包括被稱為“對緊急事件第一個做出反應”的阿諾瑞中將，卡特里娜颶風發生后，他是負責軍事救援行動的指揮官；伊拉克基地組織頭目、約旦人扎卡維；美國國務卿賴斯；微軟公司創始人比爾·蓋茨因出資抗擊瘧疾而榜上有名；還有哈里波特系列叢書的作者J·K·羅琳。
“年度人物”不總是一個人。“美國大兵”曾榮獲2003年《時代》年度人物；1988年，當選者是“危機中的地球”；而在1966年，當選者則是“全美25歲以下的年輕人”。
《時代》周刊年度人物評選的傳統開始于1927年該雜志編輯上遇到的一次尷尬。當時《時代》周刊因為一時疏忽沒有把飛行員查爾斯·林德博格那次具有歷史意義的獨自橫跨大西洋飛行作為封面故事，于是在那一年年底，雜志編輯決定評選林德博格為年度風云人物來補償過失。
有一些臭名昭著的人物也曾“榜上有名”，比如1938年的當選者是阿道夫·希特勒。《時代》周刊2004年年度人物是美國總統布什。
(中國日報網站薛曉文編譯) |
Updated: 2005-11-18 08:42
