And so are you! Talk about a cop-out; it's tough to argue with this assessment from Libertas's "Dirty Harry":

Now, I’d prefer to be named Man of the Year, but we live in particular times.

Yes, I… I am Person of the Year. Me. Little old me. Me, who sits in his underwear eating cookies sniping at Hollywood from behind a pseudonym. I don’t feel worthy, but smarter people than me know better. Obviously, I’m just insecure. Why should it feel wrong being honored in such a way? So what if I’m not risking my life to build a school or stop terrorists from killing people I don’t even share a language with?

So, thank you Time Magazine. Thank you for a little perspective regarding my own importance. I feel so much better now knowing the world could not survive without me, and the porn addicts, the fantasy gamers, the chat roomers, the emailers, the gamblers, anyone over thirty still living with his parents, and all the lousy short filmmakers…

Elsewhere, Michelle Malkin expresses her disgust with Time's annual wimp-out in video form. Paraphrasing a quote oft-attributed to G.K. Chesterton, Rush Limbaugh adds, "When you believe in nothing, you will believe anything":

And they farmed out the decision-making process! They had consulting groups made up of various kinds of people. It's almost like TIME Magazine was acting like Congress. Got a tough decision to make? Farm it out! Get some "blue-ribbon panel" in here of people that don't know what they're doing to make suggestions and then go with that rather than make the decision yourself. It's not that I care about the Person of the Year that much, but I'm a marketing guy. They have destroyed and made a joke out of what once was a very, very high honor: to be named Person of the Year. It's something people sought out. They just rendered it a meaningless joke. We're all winners! This is typical: We're all equal. They didn't have the ability to pick one person because that would signal everybody else out is a bunch of losers, or as un-worthies or what have you.

A couple of years ago, Jonah Goldberg wrote:

Time has no credibility. None. I don't care who they pick. That doesn't mean they won't get it right but that hardly means we should care much if they do. The magazine which had the guts to pick dictators and tyrants when they deserved it has, in recent years, gone the rout of People magazine. Even when they go in a controversial direction, it's invariably controversial in way designed to be not-too-controversial. "Now, Twice the Controversy But Half the Calories!" What was it a few years ago? Whistleblower women? And in 2001 when it deserved to be Osama Bin Laden, they went with Rudy Giulliani. How nice! I don't bash corporations much, but this seems to be one of those conventions that gets approved by a committee of suits before it goes anywhere.

This year's "choice" makes it official: the shark has been jumped, the concept should be retired. It's pablum.

Update: Mickey Kaus asks, is William Beutler "eerily prescient" or is Time "just preternaturally predictable"?