In a move that surprised exactly no one, Time magazine recently chose for its "Person of the Year" Barack Obama. Likely sensing that bust-size photos of Obama gazing hopefully into an indeterminate distance were just about kaput as aesthetic capital, the Time editors decided to go the cool route. Richard Stengel wrote: "Our cover portrait is by the street artist Shepard Fairey, whose roots are in the skateboarding world and whose early poster of then Senator Obama became the great populist image of the campaign. With this cover, Fairey has now created a new iconic image of the President-elect—a rich, multilayered poster that echoes but then expands on his original." The cover of Time represents a sort of closing of the circle for Fairey, whose ubiquitous Obama poster, adorned with the word "Hope," shot his style to new heights of recognizability, while galvanizing a particular image and notion of the candidate in the American consciousness. It's not hard to see that in this partnership each side is conferred abstract benefits. Time gets the "edgy" aesthetic value of Fairey's work, and Fairey gets the validation and exposure provided by Time's circulation. (In other words, the cover is the Audi A8 from Transporter 3.) Read More

At least, when we finally get there, the New York winter sunshine is the same. You see your breath in the glitter, and people are still out, all bundled up, in Union Square. So not everybody's sitting home and emailing! There's still hope for us.

"I'm just looking for somebody to talk to," says a plaintive, kindly voice, its possessor's back to us, sitting on the steps.

Boy, so are we. "Hello!"

Our new friend unhappily moves the cell phone from his face, points at it. "I'm, um, talking to my friend?"

"Ah," we say. "Aha."

We are a ghost.

+ + +