Michael Calderone at The Cutline blog at Yahoo! devoted a post to controversy on the Left over why radical WikiLeaks mastermind Julian Assange wasn't Time's Person of the Year. (Lefties have insisted conservatives could win since they're an evil force like Hitler, but Assange somehow isn't put in the Bad Guy camp, or even the Egomaniac camp.) But Calderone picked a long-time Newsweek contributor to diss Time, without really noting the professional tie:
In picking a less-controversial figure, Stengel ended up creating a controversy. Slate Group editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg, for one, said [in a Tweet] it was "gutless of Time not to name Assange."
Stengel, who had an exclusive Skype interview with Assange a few weeks ago, said he considered the WikiLeaks chief and, indeed, did select him as a runner-up for 2010. Assange, he acknowledges, has "had a big year." But in Stengel's view, Assange's actions in 2010 will not have the long-term impact of Zuckerberg's. "I think Assange will be a footnote five years from now," Stengel said.
Stengel also pointed out that "there is no Julian Assange without Bradley Manning," referring to the army private believed to be the leaker of hundreds of thousands of classified documents. (Manning has not been charged with a crime, but remains in solitary confinement far from the media's gaze). The Time editor added that "Assange might not even be on anybody's radar six months from now."
"I'm not thinking about the moment," Stengel said. "But when you look three, five years from now, does it make sense?"
This is a different sound than Stengel made before he announced the Zuckerman pick. On NBC, he hyped Assange for having an "enormous year."
