That Time of the Year

As you know by now, Time magazine has, with the usual fanfare, announced their “Persons of the Year.” They’ve selected three “whistleblowers” from the past twelve months of corporate malfeasance and government ineptitude. This is troublesome stuff. Not because people shouldn’t stand up for what they believe is right, but because when they do, and they are idolized, we find ourselves on a slippery slope of demagoguery.

In the Jewish tradition, great deeds qualify for special status as mitzvot–acts of loving kindness, real karmic capital–by remaining anonymous. There is something corrupting about Time magazine putting heroes of this kind on its cover as a publicity stunt, designed first as a ploy to sell Time magazine. We’ve got nothing against making money. God knows, we’d like to do more of that ourselves. Still, it’s easy to be cynical about the phenomenon, when it’s directly connected to Time’s bottom line, while posing as something more.

Years ago, Time sold out Henry Luce’s vision for Man of the Year. Luce wished to identify the person who had the most impact on the world and news from the previous year. (Stalin and Hitler, you’ll recall, both made Man of the Year in their time.) Instead, the editors use the issue today as a cheerleading opportunity, to rile the literal-minded mob of Americans who lack the imagination to see it as anything other than a public honor heaped on a more or less deserving person, not unlike the Oscars. (Indeed, one might argue that this year’s “whistleblowers” failed to change the course of history or make news at all, until it was too late.)

On the other hand, what makes us squirm is the real possibility that across the nation, bureaucrats are trying to figure out how to institutionalize this type of heroism. The simpleminded corporate lackey or government patriot does not understand that whistleblowers are remarkable for the very fact that they work against the grain, against the overwhelming pressure to conform in the workplace. They act out, and they act alone, and they are–under any other circumstance–the bad apple that spoils the bunch. If one wants to truly follow their example, one must first identify the overwhelming social climate against which to tilt. That climate has turned 180 degrees from what it was 18 months ago.

Recent experiments in emulating this type of behavior have been disastrous. We think of the ill-fated “TIPS” program, by which the government hoped to encourage Americans to snitch on anyone that seemed suspicious to them. And now TIA–the program for “Total Information Awareness,” overseen by Iran-Contra felon John Poindexter–has also foundered, thanks to some refreshing media scrutiny and hacktivism. When the impulse to blow the whistle is coopted by the government and converted into a witchhunt, we should all be very nervous indeed.

It’s been a tough year, to be sure. And it’s natural enough to look for heroes in the midst of so much corporate and government ugliness. It’s certainly easier in hindsight to find and celebrate the prophets in the wilderness than it is to ask why their whistleblowing didn’t effect change in time to avert catastrophe. Would FBI agent Coleen Rowley’s agitations have landed her on the cover of Time, if 9/11 hadn’t happened? Would Sherron Watkins be a Person of the Year if Ken Lay had been chastened by her warnings about Enron’s shell game? No.

And what are we to make of the fact that Time’s persons of the year are all women? First, of course, one must point out that editors love aesthetic symmetry above almost anything else. (Hence three persons of the year; odd numbers are resolved, balanced on a center point.) It’s a happy coincidence that all three are women. And yet many will be gratified by this, as if history’s dialectic is itself committed to equal opportunity. The subtle implication, intentional or accidental, real or perceived, is that men could not or would not have done what these women did.

Are women both the nobler and fairer sex? It certainly is true that they commit less crime than men. But as they achieve positions of real authority–and being a white-collar whistleblower is getting pretty close–we should expect that they are just as capable of committing all kinds of felonious acts of selfishness.