Time POY (three times the fun with Bono, and Bill and Melida Gates)(that's Melinda peering over Bono's leather-clad shoulder. You can just see her neck. Make no mistake: she's not as important as the other two. In any case, a few thoughtful entries below. The first is from someone I'll call "Leah":

While I certainly understand the business of selling magazines, and the desire to sell more, especially for Time, the selection of these three is purely a marketing decision.

U2 made $265M touring the US this year -- thousands and thousands of people saw them, and millions bought their new album. So, if a fraction of those people buy this issue at the newsstand, that's great for Time. Bill and Melinda don't give many interviews, so people who may usually get their information from other biz pubs may pick up Time to see what they have to say. Again, this is a move that may drive non-typical Time readers to purchase this issue.

Strangest to me is that Time felt they had to have the three of them. I think they should have had either Bono or B&M Gates, but not both. Their connection to each other is kind of tenuous, which doesn't change no matter how much press that Jim Kelly does to show that there's a link. But they do very, very different things -- Bono convinces governments to forgive third world debt, Gates' work on health improvement, apparently the Gateses have donated to Bono's "One" foundation. But they're not really aligned on any type of ongoing basis.

There were better choices -- but what absolutely staggered me in 2005 was that Americans, not wealthy ones, slammed by high taxes, rising gas and oil prices and all types of insults, from disappearing pensions to cuts in many types of services, reached into their wallets to the tune of $3B to help out the Katrina victims. Bill, Melinda and Bono are great people, leaders in philanthropy, etc. But it takes a lot more for someone who earns little to dig in, and that deserves to be celebrated. Although this is a demographic less likely to purchase Time on an ongoing basis.

Historians will not look kindly upon Time's decision to make Bono a person of the year three days after the successful elections in Iraq. The honor should have gone to the Iraqi voter. But I guess they figured Time's readership was suffering from Iraq fatigue, and what better to boost sales by putting a feel-good celebrity on the cover? (But, in Time's defense, it's not like Americans were paying much attention to the elections anyways).

With everything that happened this year, it had a certain generic quality to it."