Time's 2012 Person of the Year Won't Be Kim Jong-un
Ignoring the will of the people — or at least the hacking collective 4chan, which hacked its online poll in favor of Kim Jong-un — Time's 2012 Person of the Year shortlist does not include North Korea's Supreme Leader. Instead, the 85th annual honor will go to one (or two) of seven people (and/or things): the female and male CEOs of the year, a couple of presidents, a group of immigrants, two D.C. doves, or an Italian in a particle collector. In advance of Wednesday's morning's reveal, here are the official finalists, as first unveiled on the Today show this morning.
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Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo
Mohamed Morsi, President of Egypt
"Undocumented Americans"
Bill and Hillary Clinton, Mrs. and Mr. Secretary of State
Barack Obama, President of the United States
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple
Higgs Boson and Fabiola Gianotti, the building block of all matter and one of the physicists who "discovered" it
It seems like Time has covered their bases in filling the types of persons they like to choose: 2011's Person went to the amorphous "protester", which the equally amorphous "undocumented Americans" could sub in for; 2010's honor went to Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, a really rich and really smart tech wonk like Cook and Mayer; 2008 went to Obama and the magazine could go the same way after Obama's reelection; and 2007 went to the power-laden Vladimir Putin, and this year we have the power-hungry Mohamed Morsi.
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The list leaves off the man who won the magazine's online poll after almost 5.6 million votes. Sorry, 4chan — there's always next year.
