Time and Putin
Person of the year, according to Time magazine, is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the current president of the Russian Federation. Wikipedia quotes he was born in 1952, and so everyone believes, except Time's journalists at the interview, editor-in-chief John Huey and managing editor Richard Stengel, who believe Mr Putin was born in 1946!!! A great way to open an interview with the Person of the year, that person also being one of most powerful individuals in the world today.
Read the whole interview in Time, it's worth the effort, OR read a different text of it where the foolish mistake wasn't edited out. Then, there's the "A Tsar is Born" article by Adi Ignatius, written a bit for people who don't travel abroad, and also "Putin and TIME: the view from Russia" by Time's own Yuri Zarakhovich, not so persuasive. There's a tradition in United States to look at Russia with a lot of projections from its own shadow (China is simply too different for that purpose), so the choice of Putin as the "dictator" of the year is somewhat a symptom of how TIME actually sees Bush.
There are also videos of the interview in different versions, this one at Youtube (time 39 minutes). Look for the last answer on his personal religious views: "There are some things that I feel one should not in my position exhibit for public viewing, because then it becomes like self-advertising or political striptease, neither of which - I believe - are acceptable." The Russian wording is a bit different, more subtle. Anyway, nice touch. If you don't have enough time for the above video, here's a shorter one, time 9 minutes.
Read the whole interview in Time, it's worth the effort, OR read a different text of it where the foolish mistake wasn't edited out. Then, there's the "A Tsar is Born" article by Adi Ignatius, written a bit for people who don't travel abroad, and also "Putin and TIME: the view from Russia" by Time's own Yuri Zarakhovich, not so persuasive. There's a tradition in United States to look at Russia with a lot of projections from its own shadow (China is simply too different for that purpose), so the choice of Putin as the "dictator" of the year is somewhat a symptom of how TIME actually sees Bush.
There are also videos of the interview in different versions, this one at Youtube (time 39 minutes). Look for the last answer on his personal religious views: "There are some things that I feel one should not in my position exhibit for public viewing, because then it becomes like self-advertising or political striptease, neither of which - I believe - are acceptable." The Russian wording is a bit different, more subtle. Anyway, nice touch. If you don't have enough time for the above video, here's a shorter one, time 9 minutes.
Labels: politics
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