TIME Persons of the Year

Apparently, one has to be a subscriber to TIME to read the whole story about its selection of Bono and Mr. & Mrs. Gates as Persons of the Year. I'm not, so I haven't seen the article, but today's MediaBistro.com quotes the following excerpt from TIME which provides the reasons for the trio's selection.

"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."

Now, I'm up for shrewdly doing good and I think most people are also, in their own ways. But for the life of me, I'm lost about rewiring politics and re-engineering justice. And when it comes to understanding smarter mercy, or strategic hope, my reaction is, "What the hell does that mean?"

As I stated, I haven't read the article so there might actually be some objective and verifiable criteria by which the decision was made to select the Persons of the Year. It's not reflected in the excerpted quote. Rather, TIME seems to have circled Robin Hood's barn to find some serious sounding words to support a soft selection.