NA Confidential: We're not exempt, so NAC's New Albany "Person of the Year" for 2017 is #MeToo -- the NA silence breakers.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

We're not exempt, so NAC's New Albany "Person of the Year" for 2017 is #MeToo -- the NA silence breakers.

It’s time again for NA Confidential to select New Albany’s "Person of the Year."

In 2017, we’ll be approaching this task a bit differently than during previous years, although our basic definition remains intact, as gleaned from Time.

Person of the Year (formerly Man of the Year) is an annual issue of the United States news magazine Time that features and profiles a person, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that "for better or for worse ... has done the most to influence the events of the year."

This year, Time chose #MeToo, or the silence breakers -- "the thousands of (women and some men) across the world who have come forward with their experiences of sexual harassment and assault."

Accordingly, in 2017 there'll be no run-ups and teasers, and in fact, no contest.

It might fall a few votes short of acclamation, but nonetheless I'm opening and closing the nominations today, and declaring our choice for Person of the Year in New Albany: #MeToo: the NA silence breakers.

There'll be some who will question this decision, given the absence of an attention-grabbing headline in New Albany thus far. Maybe so, but we all know it's here, too -- don't we?

In a place like this, we tend to be a bit behind all conceivable curves, and so even if our civic discussion about sexual harassment and assault is belated, it's still the right one to have.

And I believe it's coming, very soon.

2017 runners-up:

New Albany Housing Authority residents ... Welcome to Jeff Gahan's self-inflicted foot-shot Waterloo, in which hundreds of the city's most vulnerable citizens have been used by a narcissist as puppets on a Dugginsian g-string to assuage a C-minus student's insatiable hubris.

The downtown street grid ... Two-way street reversion took decades too long, and the unceasing cowardice of Team Gahan stripped the project of most ancillary benefits, but there it is, and now we can begin the process of repairing the shortsightedness borne of mayoral incomprehension.

NA's independently-owned food and drink community ... There are as many opinions as there are palates, but it can't be denied that meals have been at the forefront of revitalization, and not just downtown. Here at the blog, posts about local restaurants and bars invariably double or triple the page views of most other topics.

Mike Hall ... With his boss in hiding, he's the Sarah Huckabee Sanders of this juke joint.

Jeff Gahan ... As we enter 2018, his political power has peaked. It's all downhill from here, veneer -- and Team Gahan's getting testy.

Previous winners: