Person of the Year '08

Yup, shockingly enough, Barack Obama has been named Time's Person of the Year for 2008. (I'm sure Sarah Palin was hoping she'd at least win something this year...but praise the Lord she didn't.)

It's no surprise our soon-to-be first Black president is gracing the cover of the annual issue, but I'd still suggest you take a gander. The article is very well-written, and right off-the-bat puts to rest your, 'Gee, Obama as Person of Year - that's original' complaints.

It's unlikely that you were surprised to see Obama's face on the cover. He has come to dominate the public sphere so completely that it beggars belief to recall that half the people in America had never heard of him two years ago — that even his campaign manager, at the outset, wasn't sure Obama had what it would take to win the election. He hit the American scene like a thunderclap, upended our politics, shattered decades of conventional wisdom and overcame centuries of the social pecking order. Understandably, you may be thinking Obama is on the cover for these big and flashy reasons: for ushering the country across a momentous symbolic line, for infusing our democracy with a new intensity of participation, for showing the world and ourselves that our most cherished myth — the one about boundless opportunity — has plenty of juice left in it.

Read on: 2008 Person of the Year. (Don't you love that they no longer call it 'Man of the Year'?)