Barack Obama Is TIME’s Person Of The Year, Again

Part-time onion-cutting orator and full-time President of The United States, Barack Obama, has been named The 2012 TIME Person of The Year for the second time in his two-term presidency, beating out Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and Italian particle physicist Fabiola Gianotti for the prestigious – and contentious – honorific. 

In a post accounting for the magazine’s choice, TIME’s managing editor Richard Stengel said that Barack Obama exemplified the new 21st century American, as both a political and a cultural figure: 
We are in the midst of historic cultural and demographic changes, and Obama is both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America. He is the first President to embrace gay marriage and to offer work permits to many young undocumented immigrants. There has been much talk of the coalition of the ascendant — young people, minorities, Hispanics, college-educated women — and in winning re-election, Obama showed that these fast-growing groups are not only the future but also the present. About 40% of millennials — the largest generational cohort in U.S. history, bigger even than the baby boomers — are nonwhite. If his win in 2008 was extraordinary, then 2012 is confirmation that demographic change is here to stay… 

For finding and forging a new majority, for turning weakness into opportunity and for seeking, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union, Barack Obama is TIME’s 2012 Person of the Year.” 
You can read his full statement here. Here’s an excellent photograph that’s doing the rounds this morning taken by official White House photographer, Pete Souza, of Obama being shot by a White House staffer’s son pretending to be Spider Man. Only pretending, right? The full photo essay can be found here. Four more years, y’all!
via Time
Image via @barackobama

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