Time's not on my side.

Fake Liechtenstein via entrepreneur.

Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named “Man (Person) of the Year,” like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2017

I worked at Time mag for 15 years. Doesn’t work this way.
1. Time tries to interview/shoot several possibilities
2. Agreeing to shoot/interview not a condition of being picked
DJT probably angling to set up “I didn’t want it” when he doesn’t get picked (2x/row would be unusual) https://t.co/3Vh43BdKD5

— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) November 24, 2017

Well, that explains that. Trump called Time to ask why they hadn't reached out yet to schedule the interview/shoot, and they told him, nicely, that it PROBABLY wouldn't happen twice in a row.

It's a tidy example of my semiotic theory of lying, according to which the function of a lie is to hide some particular truth by occupying its proper semiotic space. Here, with some elementary transformations: he called Time, so in the lie Time called him, and they were forced to acknowledge that he PROBABLY wouldn't receive the honor, so he said he PROBABLY would.





I can't get over the instrumentation on this, which I just learned about recently, with Keith Richards on piano, Bill Wyman on cello, and poor Brian Jones, the composer of the song, in his ridiculous hat, on alto recorder (treble recorder, they say in England).