12.20.2007

Enough, already, with the eyes

No one is born with a stare like Vladimir Putin's. The Russian President's pale blue eyes are so cool, so devoid of emotion that the stare must have begun as an affect, the gesture of someone who understood that power might be achieved by the suppression of ordinary needs, like blinking. The affect is now seamless, which makes talking to the Russian President not just exhausting but often chilling. It's a gaze that says, I'm in charge.

(Time, in its "Person of the Year 2007" piece)

Meanwhile, from the inestimable Avedon, a footnote:

I see Time copped-out again on their Person of the Year. You can just hear them going into a panic when they realized that thought it should be Al Gore, and they just couldn't bring themselves to do it.

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