Time's Person of the Year Acceptance Speech

Your Mayor is honored and deeply humbled to have been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, for the excellence of my work on the very blog you are currently reading and my podcast, which none of you seem to be listening to. “For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you,� Time gushed in its mash note to me.

Apparently, however, this honor goes not only to me but is also extended to the guys who turned “Star Trek� footage and a Nine Inch Nails song into a curious little bit of homoerotica, the gentleman who explicates the inexplicable comic strip “Marmaduke� on a daily basis, the inspired paranoiacs who divined an impenetrable conspiracy linking Jenna and Barbara Bush’s vacation in Argentina, a White House Paraguayan land grab, international immunity for U.S. soldiers and the Moonies and even every nutcase whose furtive visit to a chatroom resulted in an appearance on “Dateline NBC’s� “To Catch a Predator.�

Which, as you might imagine, diminishes the prestige of the honor somewhat.

Nonetheless, I am not entirely chagrined to accept this prize from Time Magazine, even though, as Nora Ephron points out, the honor comes with no small amount of backhanded condescension: “I especially love the part about ‘working for nothing,’ I especially love the condescension in that phrase, the dead giveaway about how Time Magazine really feels about the giant collective unwashed, unpaid You Out Here that is nonetheless making life a misery for Them In There - for the Old Media scrambling to figure out What It Means.� Even though Lost Remote kicks the choice of Me as Person of the Year to the curb as a wussy attempt at feel-goodism, a morphine drip for a populace too benumbed by the bad news of the past year to brace against one more outrage in 2006 (Time’s Person of the Year, it points out, used to be the person who actually affected global events – for good or bad – not some symbolic construct serving to salve the wounds of the post-9/11 era).

And yes, I accept this honor even though it comes with no cash prize nor even a trophy I can set upon my mantle nor even a miserable little certificate I can hang upon my wall. Even though it’s an honor that is utterly bereft of meaning or cachet, even though it will cheapen every future Time Person of the Year Award, even though it underscores the essential arbitrariness and pointlessness of handing out any award at all …

In spite of all this – or, perhaps, precisely because of this – I am proud and yet profoundly apathetic in my acceptance of the accolade of being Time Magazine’s 2006 Person of the Year. I would like to thank my family, my lawyers, my accountants, my bodyguards, my bookies, and, above all, God, from whom all blessings - and empty gestures - flow.