Some ideas are born adult and the Press Election _"The Man of the Year"_ is a them.
On 1927, the editors of _" TIME "_ magazine wanted to place pilot Charles Lindberg in the FRONT-PAGE but they had lost the right moment and they needed a pretext:_ " Why don't make the Man of the Year of him?" _ an editor suggest .
Due to this TIME magazine first idea, today we have this avalanche of men of that, women of that and you list of everything: of the crime to the tennis player of the century.
Winston Churchill was Haft Century's Man, Gorbatchov it was the Man of the Decade of 80, and when the ayatollah Khomeini was the Man of the Year in 79 five thousand of TIME 's subscreibers canceled theirs signatures.
Stalin, Truman and other four, besides Bill Clinton, they were chosen twice.
Andrew Grove, creator of Intel was man of the year of 97, but Bill Gates, the richest man of the world, never took the title.
In 82 the computer won of the men and the threatened Earth was chosen in 88.
Several men and women divided the title, but in 72 years of competition alone three women they were chosen alone: Wallis Simpson, the duchess of Windsor, the queen Elizabeth II and Corazón Aquino, of Philippines.
Martin Luther King was the first and only American black, Selassié it was the first and only African black.
Nelson Mandela was chosen in a group of more three pacifiers: Arafat, Rabin and Botha.
On 1999,_TIME_ magazine created the _ " Person of the Century " _ and now opened the competition in the Internet ( as BBC of London ! ).
It already received more than 29 million votes and, ( on-line ), Elvis Presley is the champion, ( we are the champion, my friend ! ) but the decision of the title in the magazine will be of the editors and for them Elvis Presley didn't enter in the list of a hundred in the century published in five numbers of the magazine.
Elvis was knocked down by Sinatra, because ( to the editors TIME ) Elvis is not loved tenderly , by the other side ( to the old editors of TIME ) Hitler was the Man of the Year in 38 and he is serious candidate to the title of the Man of the Century.
We have to note that it is among the finalists competing with Franklyn Roosevelt, until today the only triple man: years 32, 34 and 41.
The decision will come out this week and one of the editors that participates in her told me that perhaps is not a person and it can be an invention, an event or movement.
In United States, on this century, nothing moved so much as the women's condition.
Not the movement of racial integration made so much progress.
Century XX, the woman's century, of Hitler or of Roosevelt?
I wonder why _Karl Marx_ does not have even a chance on TIME.
Would your answer me ?
Emilio Costa Manso