Bono is Named One of Time's "People of the Year"!

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Bono, along with Bill and Melinda Gates, have been named Time's "People of the Year" for 2005.


You can read about it on the Time website:

http://www.time.com/time/


There are also some GREAT pictures on the website too!


http://www.time.com/time/personoftheyear/2005/photoessay/in_the_name_of_love/


And here's a report from CNN:


http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/12/18/time.poy/index.html



CNN) -- The good deeds of an activist rock legend and one of the world's richest men and his wife carried the day in 2005, as Time magazine on Sunday named U2 frontman Bono and philanthropic couple Bill and Melinda Gates as its "Persons of the Year."

"Sudden disasters get the big headlines, but day after day other tragedies of avoidable dimensions unfold: The one child who dies of malaria in Africa every 29 seconds, the one person who is infected with HIV every 6.4 seconds, the 8 million who die every year because they are too poor to stay alive," Time's managing editor Jim Kelly writes.

"And who is proving most effective in figuring out how to eradicate those calamities? In different ways, it is Bill and Melinda Gates, co-founders of the world's wealthiest charitable foundation, and Bono, the Irish rocker who has made debt reduction sexy."

The Gateses, the magazine notes, "spent the year giving more money away faster than anyone ever has."

In January, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation committed $750 million to improving access to child immunizations, accelerating introduction of new vaccines and strengthening vaccine delivery systems.

The foundation focuses on education, global health, improving public libraries and supporting at-risk families, according to its Web site. The Gateses awarded grants to schools in Texas, Colorado and Massachusetts, as well as the Lutheran World Relief program, which received $640,000 to help nomadic communities in Niger avert food crises.

Bono was one of the organizers behind this year's Live 8 concerts in nine cities worldwide. The concerts were aimed at getting the leaders of the world's nations leaders to come to the aid of impoverished Africa. They did so at the G8 summit, agreeing to double aid to Africa to $50 billion by 2010 and cancel the debts of the poorest nations.

"Bono charmed and bullied and morally blackmailed the leaders of the world's richest countries into forgiving $40 billion in debt owed by the poorest," the magazine said.

In addition, Bono is a co-founder of the DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) organization, which fights poverty and HIV in the developing world. From that organization was spawned the ONE Campaign to Make Poverty History.

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This award has been long overdue for Bono and I'm overjoyed that it has finally arrived.


CONGRATULATIONS and THANK YOU, BONO for all that you are and for all that you do in our world.

It is a blessing to have you amongst us. May we learn to better follow your example of co-existence, tolerance and your willingness to sacrifice your personal time to make this world a more just place for the world's poorest people.

:applaud: :hug:
 
Very predictable choice.

They should have given it to the doctors working in Iraq.
 
Bono was one of the organizers behind this year's Live 8 concerts in nine cities worldwide...In addition, Bono is a co-founder of the DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) organization

and like i said in ZC, what about the others who were behind these great things? don't they also deserve the recognition? clearly, bono is not soley responsible.
 
I was disappointed that Bob Geldof was not chosen.

Time magazine chose these people because they felt it was more important to recognize those who see pain in our world and try to do something POSITIVE about it rather than to dwell in negativity.

Personally, I think that sort of reasoning is sound.

I wish there was some more positivity around here. :up:
 
what i mean is, there are others who worked just as hard at organizing and founding these things. why does bono alone receive the credit? i was just throwing the thought out there for discussion.

other than that, i am proud of him, whether i feel he deserves it or not. i have always been proud of being a fan of a band that has done so much.
 
Well perhaps for every choice there is a better choice, as is often the case with the Nobel Peace Prize. But that doesn't necessarily make the choice crummy, I think Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are deserving of *some* honor for what they've managed to accomplish. It wasn't easy, and they sure as hell didn't have to do it. Here are people who could be drinking martinis on the French Riviera and instead are working their asses off on helping the less fortunate.
 
I'm happy with Time's Choice of naming Bono as one of the Persons of the year award.'

I also fully agree with verte76 in saying that not a lot of people are willing to be so out there with the suffering of the African people. Yea, he could have done the normal stupid Celebrity cliches like drinking the night away and going to a lot of clubs...but I think he wants the people of Africa to get the same medical treatments as America or Europe. I can also understand why he's so vocal too....and yea I do understand that other people helped Bono with DATA and the likes.....but I think that Bono needs to be out there and be vocal so that the plight can be understood a little bit more.
 
For me it should have gone to a Red Cross volunteer (anyone of them). Not only where they important during Katrina and the Tsunami earlier in the year, but they risk there lives in war torn countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
VertigoGal said:
althouogh I'm sure Bono's had his fair share of martinis at his villa in the south of France :wink: )...just some thoughts.

True, but he could be doing only that and never do anything else........that was my point. He doesn't *have* to do this, he does it completely by choice.
 
Placing doctors or Red Cross workers on the cover won't sell as many issues. Sad, but true. Time is there to sell issues (and yes, report the news, but they're competing with other weekly news magazines).

While it's nice to see them choosing people doing good in a year with so much bad news, I hope no one really gets their panties in a bundle over this. It's the cover of a magazine, that's all. People put too much weight on these kinds of things.

That said, I was surprised by the choice - I never even considered he was seriously in the running to be the Person of the Year.
 
HOLY WOW!!! :hyper:

Quite deserving, as this actually puts the world awareness of poverty and positive steps to DO SOMETHING about it as the TRUE "people of the year".

I'm just in awe that TIME recognizes this to this degree!! Let's here it :applaud: for the amount of press this will get and the increased awareness this will raise.

God bless!!

In response to opinions that the actual people who do the daily grind deserve this, I think we realize how the media works. What it recognizes is the celebrity, the leadership and charisma of leaders to inspire us to DO greater acts in our daily lives. And I do not think this is wrong.
 
corianderstem said:
Placing doctors or Red Cross workers on the cover won't sell as many issues. Sad, but true. Time is there to sell issues (and yes, report the news, but they're competing with other weekly news magazines).

While it's nice to see them choosing people doing good in a year with so much bad news, I hope no one really gets their panties in a bundle over this. It's the cover of a magazine, that's all. People put too much weight on these kinds of things.

That said, I was surprised by the choice - I never even considered he was seriously in the running to be the Person of the Year.

True...so very true :tsk:

I was also suprised by the choice too...I was like "WTF?! :huh:"
 
I'm glad the public had no voice in this. JK Rowling was a candidate, and in a reader poll, she or he, (Whatever gender it is) beat out everyone including Bono, mostly due to those Harry Potter fankids.
 
I'm happy with the choice, and proud of Bono. I think he deserves every bit of recognition he gets. :)

(but it would have been nice to see a non-celebrity be "Person of the Year," too.)
 
I know about Bono´s merits and have been praising them, but here´s a toast to Bill and Melinda Gates!

750 mil is quite a sum. I don´t know whether Gates can write all of that off (taxes). Ok that guy is a 100 billion $ heavyweight, anyway.. I think it is good that he is rewarded, maybe more super-rich can follow his example.
 
Bono, whom I consider one of the most extraordinary men in our lifetime, deserves honor and recognition. He is not lacking in either.

"To whom much is given, much is expected." He is one of the exceptions who lives by that. Here's also to those who have never been given much, who choose to give somehow anyway.
 
Another article on this award from Reuters:


Time Persons of 2005: Bill and Melinda Gates, Bono
Sun Dec 18, 2005 8:02 AM ET

By Claudia Parsons

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The richest man in the world, Bill Gates, and his wife, Melinda, were named Time magazine's "Persons of the Year" along with Irish rocker Bono for being "Good Samaritans" who made a difference in different ways.

"For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are Time's Persons of the Year," the magazine said in its December 19 issue, made public on Sunday.

Managing Editor James Kelly said the three had been chosen as the people most effective at finding ways to eradicate such calamities as malaria in Africa, HIV and AIDS and the grinding poverty that kills 8 million people a year.

Time also named former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton as "Partners of the Year" for their humanitarian efforts after the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, and the unlikely friendship that developed from that work.

"Natural disasters are terrible things, but what defines us is not what happens to us, but how we react to it," Kelly said.

"When you look at the number of people who die from the kind of diseases and poverty that the Gates' and Bono are fighting, the death tolls are far greater than what occurs in natural disasters or wars," he told Reuters.

The founder of computer giant Microsoft Corp. , whose personal fortune of $46.5 billion topped Forbes magazine's list of the world's richest again this year, and his wife were named for their work in the Gates Foundation, the world's biggest charity with a $29 billion endowment, while Bono was described as the "rocker who has made debt reduction sexy."

THE ROCKER AND THE GEEK

"The rocker's job is to be raucous, grab our attention. The engineer's job is to make things work," Time said, describing the unlikely alliance that developed after the three met for dinner in 2002. They were reunited on Friday in Omaha, where Bono was performing with U2, to be photographed for the cover.

The Gates Foundation funds hundreds of projects around the world primarily focused on public health, from vaccinating children to developing new drugs, as well as educational programs and scholarships in the United States and abroad.

Bono and fellow musician Bob Geldof spearheaded a popular campaign to tackle poverty in Africa through canceling the debts of the poorest countries in the world, raising global awareness through the Live 8 concerts in July.

Partly due to popular pressure, the world's industrialized nations agreed in July to double aid to poor countries by 2010, adding $50 billion a year, and to cancel poor countries' debt.

"Bono charmed and bullied and morally blackmailed the leaders of the world's richest countries into forgiving $40 billion in debt owed by the poorest," Time said.

Kelly said he expected the choice to surprise some people, but the unlikely alliance of the richest man in the world and a "hell-raiser" like Bono was an inspiring example of how different approaches could be effective.

Kelly said the "odd couple" of former Presidents Bush and Clinton had been among the contenders for "Person of the Year," which ranged from talk show host Oprah Winfrey, for her influential campaigning for hurricane relief, to Mother Nature, encompassing the tsunami, hurricanes and earthquakes.

Time has been naming its person of the year since 1927 and the tradition has become the source of speculation every year, as well as controversy over unpopular choices such as Adolf Hitler in 1938 and Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.

The aim is to pick "the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse."

Time's 2004 Person of the Year was U.S. President George W. Bush while "The American Soldier" graced the 2003 cover in the year when U.S. troops invaded Iraq.

"You want to make a choice for the history books as well as one which is fresh and interesting," Kelly said.
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And I agree - Bill and Melinda Gates are some of the most unselfish people in the world,

They are completely deserving of this award. :hug:
 
Muggsy said:
the only thing I really hate is the magazine cover...

i agree...at least so far. I don't like Bono wedged between the Gates...it looks fake and like a cheap tabloid editing job, or like justiceleague actionfigure arrays. somehow their bodies look manipulated, their chests puffed out. the debt-relief heroes, with the married couple purposely broken up by the rockstar.
blech. it's rather appalling i think, cheap and very unsexy. i mean, true its hard to make bill gates look sexy, but to have bono not look sexy is a trick i think they pulled off with this one.

okay, now my mind feels a little freer, if not exactly happier.
cheers!
 
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