"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," wrote Time editor Rick Stengel. "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." Mr. Stengel announced the selection this morning of the Today show and the magazine will be out on newsstands on Friday.

Mr. Obama was also named the person of the year in 2008, after he won the last presidential election. The magazine has a tendency to pick newly elected presidents.

The magazine also released a Time "Person of the Year" shortlist: Malala Yousafzai, Tim Cook, Mohamed Morsi and Fabiola Gianotti. Each of runners up will be featured for the first time on four additional covers inside the magazine.

Remember back in 2006, when You were chosen as the person of the year for all that content sharing on the World Wide Web? Well, now, it's six years later and You are not the person of 2012. But You still have opinions!

So, why not vote? Like voting for president or for American Idol. Well, sort of. Because actually, You, valued as You were in 2006, and now in a more, shall we say 'advisory' role?

The website explains:

As always, TIME's editors will choose the Person of the Year, but that doesn't mean readers shouldn't have their say. Cast your vote for the person you think most influenced the news this year for better or worse.

So, it's more like the People's Choice Award than the Oscar's.

As you might imagine, this information became humiliating to me right around the time I sprouted my own breasts (sixth grade or seventh grade, depending on which breast you want to date from—they were Irish twins). It didn’t help that my mother, a childbirth education teacher, liked to brag about it to her equally liberal-minded friends and colleagues. But hindsight tends to put things into perspective, and so while I might still harbor some adolescent shame, I must at least give my mother retroactive props for not posing on the cover of a national magazine with me latched to her breast.

When I clicked the link to TIME’s recent “Are You Mom Enough?” cover I was, coincidentally, breastfeeding my nearly 8-month-old son while idly scrolling through my Facebook feed. When I saw it, I cringed, and not because of the little towhead in camo cargo pants staring out quizzically with a faceful of aureole—my first instinct was to give him a fist bump of solidarity—but because I could instantly see the national titty fit that would ensue. The tweets, the blog posts, the op-eds and the seemingly straight reporting would all pack a subtly judgmental punch. Breastfeeding, like sleep-training or circumcision, is one of those topics sure to incite riots in the never-ending “mommy wars,” a largely online conflict forever hovering at a tedious and hostile stalemate that more or less boils down to “Parenting: You’re Doing It Wrong.” The TIME article was bait for pearl-clutchers and co-sleepers alike, and it worked.

Now, I don’t believe many people—excepting, perhaps, those who stand to profit from formula sales—would seriously argue that breastfeeding for some length of time isn’t a good idea, assuming the mother is capable. The American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommends breastfeeding children for at least their entire first year of life, and even noted misogynist Rush Limbaugh has advocated for it on his show. But the cultural sticking points remain duration and location. “If they can ask for it, they’re too old,” is a common refrain, and many opine that breastfeeding outside the home should be avoided whenever possible. Some go so far as to liken babies dining al fresco to public urination.

Having been raised by civil rights champions, my feelings on the topic have always been best expressed (as so many things are) by Shakira lyrics: Whenever, wherever. But I understand that I am an outlier, so I turned to a few lactating friends for research. (I wanted to poll my fellow Park Slope Parents, but after my last column I received a stern email from the chair of the advisory board chastising me for my “breach of netiquette” in quoting from the email threads, and revoking my membership. Two weeks later, however, I am still receiving a dozen daily Yahoo blasts, which I can only assume is a part of my punishment.)

One friend, a WASP-y type who has literally clutched her pearls in my presence, weaned her baby after three months of harrowing hooter hiding on the Upper West Side so that she could go back to work. She brought this up in a mother’s group and was met with pitying stares, the kind most New Yorkers reserve for people trying to score a walk-in table at Momofuku Ko. Another, a part-time working mom with an Aretha Franklin-level rack, stopped at seven months simply because of the physics involved, especially in mixed company. A third is happily breastfeeding her 1-year-old with no plans to stop anytime soon and has casually eaten dinner with her in-laws while completely topless.So I don’t know where that leaves me. Sometime before kindergarten. Somewhere between “under cover of Slanket” and “on the cover of TIME.”

Breastfeeding is hard. It’s harder than it looks, and that goes double if the person you see breastfeeding is doing it in a crowded space (I consider surreptitiously feeding my baby on a rush-hour subway my most significant athletic achievement since winning an 800-meter race at a high school track meet in 1997). Choosing to breastfeed means sacrificing time, energy, ownership of your body—and the majority of your most flattering tops. It also often means willingly inserting your nipples into suction cups and standing in your office bathroom stall like a Holstein while your co-workers are grabbing lunch and taking smoking breaks. It means shoeless haggling with TSA agents over coolers full of breast milk and watching helplessly as two wet blossoms spread across your chest when a baby cries within earshot during lunch with your boss.

What I’m saying is, it’s not nearly as easy as public urination. It’s an endeavor that most women do not take lightly—especially if they choose to do it for a number of years. It is also not a sexual act. It’s not fair for us as a culture to make breasts into comically carnal advertising orbs used to fill Victoria’s Secret Very Sexy® Crochet-lace Demi Bras and sell beer and then deny them their primary biological function, just because we’ve gotten used to having to enter a credit card number in order to see someone’s nipples.

So, to the question: Are you mom enough? Unless you’ve appeared on Toddlers & Tiaras instructing your over-caffeinated 4-year-old to say “a dollar makes me holler,” the answer is probably yes. If you love and support your children, chances are they will turn out fine, or at least no more emotionally scathed than the average person, which works out to roughly three cumulative years of therapy. Incidentally, having breastfed well past the age of the boy on the TIME cover, I’m thrilled to report that I am not—according to The New York Times Magazine’s recent checklist—a documented psychopath. And I’m going to milk that for all it’s worth.
editorial@observer.com

And what would Baudrillard say?

Chicago may not have elected Rahm Emanuel mayor quite yet, but that isn't stopping Bloomberg: Hizzoner talked about his support for the former White House chief of staff to Time this week in an interview that also covered Madoff, gun control, and Bloomberg's odd drinking habit.

"This is going to be a different Rahm Emanuel," Bloomberg said. "He's going to be a good mayor, and we'll work well together. Much better than when he was in the White House and I was a wise-ass who might run against his boss."

The mayor also mentioned lessons learned from December's snowstorm debacle ("I'm sorry that it happened"), public failure to recognize the Madoff phenomenon ("there's no free lunch"), and gun control ("If it takes you 33 bullets to kill a deer, you're not a sportsman"). He also talked about the way he drinks his beer: reportedly, Bloomberg likes his brew on the rocks.

"Incidentally, don't put it in and let it sit there," he said. "You have the ice, pour in a little beer, drink it. Pour in a little beer, drink it."

Interview in full below:

10 Questions with Mayor Michael Bloomberg

What lessons did you learn from the recent snowstorm that paralyzed New York City?

I'm sorry that it happened. Can we do it better? Yes. But we have done nine years of cleaning the snow. You don't define all the hard work that our sanitation department does based on one snowstorm.

Where will the economy be a year from now? Will the unemployment rate get better?

The economy will have improved, but it's not going to be better for everybody. The [gap] between the requirements of the workplace and the skill sets that our workforce has is growing, not declining.

Is there room for a candid, non-ideological big-city mayor to step onto the national stage and fix problems?

There's room for people like me to influence the dialogue, but I do not believe there is room for an independent candidate. In any case, I have 1,050 days from today left to go, and I've told the public I would fill out my term. I'm going to serve the four years.

I meant Rahm Emanuel.

He sent me an e-mail yesterday saying happy birthday. I wrote back and said, "I assume you don't need any help, but if you do, call." This is going to be a different Rahm Emanuel. He's going to be a good mayor, and we'll work well together. Much better than when he was in the White House and I was a wise-ass who might run against his boss.

Have bankers gotten an unfair rap in the past few years?

Yes. They get a very unfair rap. Not that they didn't speculate, but we had an expansion in this country that any rational person should have known was not sustainable. You can't have everybody making money in the stock market every day. But we all wanted the party to continue. How [else] can you explain the Bernie Madoff phenomenon?

How do you explain it, then?

Nobody cared. Everybody just thought, Where did Madoff get the idea? A cynic would say Social Security, [though] I would never say that. But it's exactly the same thing, isn't it? I also think people should have asked why he could outperform like that. There's no free lunch.

You've been outspoken lately on gun control. What are you trying to achieve?

Guns kill people. I'm not opposed to the Second Amendment. I'm not opposed to hunters. I don't understand why we have to sell magazines with 33 bullets. If it takes you 33 bullets to kill a deer, you're not a sportsman. And armor-piercing bullets - the last time I saw a deer with a bulletproof vest was a long time ago. Guns are one of the biggest killers in the country, and it's an easy problem to solve if we had the courage to [do so].

What can't the mayor of New York City say?

One of the measures of maturity of our city is that you can address social issues that are uncomfortable. It's just a matter of how you address them. Sometimes people will take offense. Sometimes they won't.

You have been made fun of recently for the way you drink beer. So, for the record, you like ice in your beer?

Yeah. Incidentally, don't put it in and let it sit there. You have the ice, pour in a little beer, drink it. Pour in a little beer, drink it.

Reader question: You've been so successful in business. What's the point of doing one of the all-time hard-to-please-everyone jobs? (Gerardo Valero, Mexico City)

Because it's an all-time hard-to-please-everyone job. It's a great challenge, and it's the world I'm going to leave my kids. They will do a lot better if the world is better than if they inherit [all of] my money.

This week Assange answers back, in the form of Saturday Night Live's Bill Hader. 

"Time magazine," says faux Assange, "Always on the cutting edge, discovering Facebook only weeks after your grandmother." 

Assange runs down a few of the differences between himself and Zuck. 

"I give you private information on corporations for free, and I'm a villain. Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money, and he's man of the year!"

Julian Assange won the popular vote, but as the editors at Time remind us, Zuckerberg is something of rebel himself:

"Like two of our runners-up this year, Julian Assange and the Tea Party, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have a whole lot of veneration for traditional authority."

Insulting Harvard students isn't quite the same as facilitating the biggest leak of classified documents in U.S. military history, but we get the idea. 

Oh wait, there's more?

In a sense, Zuckerberg and Assange are two sides of the same coin. Both express a desire for openness and transparency. While Assange attacks big institutions and governments through involuntary transparency with the goal of disempowering them, Zuckerberg enables individuals to voluntarily share information with the idea of empowering them. Assange sees the world as filled with real and imagined enemies; Zuckerberg sees the world as filled with potential friends. Both have a certain disdain for privacy: in Assange's case because he feels it allows malevolence to flourish; in Zuckerberg's case because he sees it as a cultural anachronism, an impediment to a more efficient and open connection between people.

Over the long haul, Facebook will probably have a greater impact on the lives of more people than Wikileaks. But for his ability to reawaken us to the horrors of war, to rattle those long entrenched in the seats of power and to truly test the limits of free speech and freedom of information, Julian Assange deserved this year's award.

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

Luce, who had three ex-wives and an even bigger collection of cast-iron toys, had plenty of space if he wanted to store either in his five-bedroom, six-plus-bathroom co-op. Even by the exclusive standards of 4 Sutton Place, which has a mere 14 floors and 10 units, the 10th- and 11th-floor apartment is a pricey prize. With bold red walls and the river right outside the window, it was used by Luce's fourth wife, Leila, to host 60-person soirees for the city's literati.  

Luce, who gave up collecting art because it was too expensive, had no such scruples about luxury real estate. He also purchased a place for his niece at East 54th Street. 

The fearsome publisher took over Fortune in 1968, becoming publisher of Time a year later. He also oversaw the construction of the Time & Life Building at Rockefeller Center. When he died five years ago at the age of 80, his wife, Leila, continued to live in the apartment until she passed away in 2009.

The apartment was listed in September 2009 and rode a bumpy luxury market. It started at $7.5 million and went into contract just a month later, but then it was re-listed with an even dearer $8 million price. Brown Harris Stevens brokers Mary Rutherfurd and Leslie Coleman declined to comment.

The place finally sold to venture capitalist Philip Sassower and Susan Oppenheimer Sassower. You may recall, dear reader, that this spring the couple sold their full-floor apartment at 720 Park Avenue to philanthropist Jamie Tisch for $22 million, down from a whopping $33 million. Hopefully now that $11 million price chop doesn't smart quite so much.

lkusisto@observer.com

In September of 1977, there was also a Time cover featuring a blue sky with a nice yellow house, except the thing was floating upwards. The cover story was called, gorgeously, Housing: It's Outasight. This week's was called The Case Against Homeownership; for an additional take on that case, try David Leonhardt's excellent column in the Times.

The '77 story is worth pouring over, too, if only because it reads like an ancient manuscript from a long-lost land. "Some wives feel forced to go to work, not because they want to have careers or earn their own spending money, but because buying that dream house nowadays usually requires two incomes," Time explained. It has quotes from a bounty of Americans annoyed by high home prices. How quaint life was! "If anybody had told me six months ago that I would spend $115,000 for a house, I would have laughed out loud," says an executive at a Florida medical-equipment manufacturer. He sold all his bonds and cashed in his savings account to get the $40,000 for a down payment.

And California? A "housing Oz unto itself," the magazine marvels. "And these absurd numbers, $100,000," moans a high school principal there. "It's some kind of fantasy world."

But that's not all the archives offer. "Inside the New American Home," was on Time's cover in 2002. "Chef's kitchens, giant master suites, home theaters," the magazine said. "People are turning their houses into luxurious escapes. Come take our guided tour." The house, again, was yellow. "Home Sweet Home: Why we're going gaga over real estate," was the cover line in June 2005, over a cartoon of a man bear-hugging a yellow house. Some things don't change.

mabelson@observer.com

When the Newsweek sale was announced in the spring, Mr. Stengel told The York Times that his magazine was “very profitable last year, and we will be even more profitable this year.”

"I've never taken any satisfaction in their downward spiral, but obviously it does create opportunities for us," Mr. Stengel told Mr. Kurtz.

Mr. Stengel has made cuts to his staff and reined in unpaid circulation in the last few years and, Mr. Kurtz reports, Time is on track to bring in more than $50 million in profit this year (part of this is coming from a growing events business, including a conference with Bill Clinton at this year's World Cup in South Africa). With new acquisitons like Fareed Zakaria, Mr. Stengel's magazine will only get stronger.

Meanwhile "institution builder" Sidney Harman told the Journal last week that he would be happy if Newsweek were breaking even in three years. He'll be 95.

"We've become a category of one," Mr. Stengel told Mr. Kurtz. But is any magazine ever in a category of one? And does any editor think that not having competition will be good for his or her magazine? There are other small, hungry newsweeklies out there: The Week, for example, which has been growing at a fast clip and pioneered ad-sales techniques that have been adopted by Time.

Read: 'Time 100' Gala Honors Influencers, Gathers Celebrities