person of the year

Over at the NYT, Frank Rich makes a persuasive case for why Tiger Woods (rather than Time's preposterous choice, Ben Bernanke) should be the 2009 person of the year. You should read the whole column, but this quote pretty much sums up his premise:

"If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy)."

(And yes, that's the actual cover of the January, 2010 edition of Golf Digest. Talk about bad timing.)

(And no, this is not the "meta" post alluded to in the last post. Consider this one an unexpected bonus. Meta still to come.)