Tsar of the Year

Well, so much for my prognosticating abilities: Time announced their Person of the Year today, and it wasn't David Petraeus, nor was it J.K. Rowling, nor was it Al Gore. I don't feel as bad about the person they did select, Vladimir Putin (I did say he'd be an "interesting choice"), as about the fact that Petraeus, who I had pegged as the clear favorite, was apparently only their fifth choice. Maybe the commenters to the last post who thought that Time, as a "Leftist" rag, would never pick the general had a point, although on my scale Putin sits pretty far to the right of Petraeus. But meanwhile, this gives me one more chance to remind everyone that President Putin is, like Gore and Rowling, a published author: while in office he found time to cowrite Judo: History, Theory, Practice. But he still has some catching up to do: Joseph Stalin, in addition to being named Man of the Year twice, was a poet early in his career (as described in Simon Sebag Montefiore's new Young Stalin) and authored an endless series of books, including his, um, contribution to literary criticism, Marxism and Problems of Linguistics. --Tom