Time Magazine Naming Joe Biden ‘Person of the Year’ Makes Total Sense for Today’s Boot-Licking Media

Time Magazine unveiled former Vice President Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris its “Person of the Year” Friday, celebrating its annual ritual of naming a person, group, or idea the most critically important force on the face of the planet over the course of the last 12 months.

In choosing Biden-Harris, the magazine is keeping with the now-established tradition of giving its most prestigious honor to the winner of the presidential race in the year of the quadrennial election. In 2016, the magazine lauded President Donald Trump. In 2012, and 2008, it chose President Barack Obama. In 2004 and 2000, the publication awarded President George W. Bush. The paper skipped the presidential winner in 1996, but chose President Bill Clinton in 1992.

Winners of the presidential election were still afforded the honor throughout the 20th century, though it was far less common. Each president still graced the cover of the legacy magazine as its chosen “Person of the Year” since it launched the series in 1927, except for Presidents Herbert Hoover and Gerald Ford. So while its become common practice in this century to go with the winner of the election in an ordinary year this decade, it certainly hasn’t been a requirement, 2020 certainly hasn’t been ordinary.

Time’s 2020 cover feature of the Biden-Harris profile is reminiscent of the heroism portrayed of Stacey Abrams by the Washington Post earlier this year, casting the media’s revered Democratic figures as righteous champions of Democracy and serving as beacons of hope and freedom in the dystopian Trump-plagued era.

The more than 6,400-word profile is beaming with admiration for the man who, one might think coming away from reading it, is saving the nation from collapse. The piece declares the outgoing incumbent president a “minotaur,” while comparing Biden to Abraham Lincoln. Trump, the authors wrote, is a sick symptom of American racism and inequality “that undermines both its ideals and its functioning.”