PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE stopped caring about Time magazine's Man of the Year contest some time ago. On a periodic basis, the magazine signaled its chronic frivolity and opted for idiotic gimmicks. You might remember that last year we all won the prize. In an earlier year, the planet Earth won. Even given Time's parameters--the award is supposed to go to the person who had the biggest impact on the world in the previous year--these choices showed that even Time's editors didn't take the award particularly seriously.

Because of those aforementioned parameters, past winners of the Man of the Year combine to form a rogue's gallery of gimmicks, serious newsmakers and, most notably, historic villains. Joseph Stalin is in Time's Man of the Year collection. So too is Adolf Hitler. There's even the Ayatollah Khomenni, facing Mecca five times a day and demanding death to America.

Conservatives got wrapped up in this year's award process more than usual. Although I haven't made a scientific study of it (and have no plans to do so), I don't recall in past years conservative commentators and bloggers lobbying for a particular individual. But this year was different. We had a guy who we wanted to see honored by Time magazine as its Man of the Year: David Petraeus, the man who has done so much to change Iraq. Even by Time's expressed standards, Petraeus would have been a logical choice. No one had done more to change the world in 2007, and given the nature of

Naturally, Time shoved a sharp stick in the collective conservative eye and chose Vladimir Putin as its man of the year.

IN THE ESSAY DESCRIBING its selection process, Time's Richard Stengel hurries to point out that "Time's Person of the Year is not and never has been an honor. It is not an endorsement. It is not a popularity contest." Lest we doubt the magazine's sincerity on that score, Stengel further notes that Joseph Stalin, "the man for whom (Putin's) grandfather prepared blinis," twice brought the prize home to Moscow. While Stengel is suggesting that Stalin was an obvious monster, not everyone who covered Stalin in the American media shared that view.

Regardless, according to Stengel, Time's Man of the Year award "is supposed to be a clear-eyed recognition of the world as it is and of the most powerful individuals and forces shaping that world--for better or for worse." Given Time's putatively clear-eyed coverage, it's no surprise that David Petraeus hardly registered a blip on the magazine's radar screen. The runners up that Stengel mentioned included Al Gore (mentioned first!), Baghdad's inept politicians, China, and J.K. Rowling. It is a peculiar clear-eyed view of the world that judges J.K. Rowling's 2007 year to have had more long term "shaping" power than David Petraeus's. (In Time's official list of runners-up, Petraeus came in fourth, trailing Gore, Rowling and China's Hu Jintao.)

TIME'S SKEWED VISION helpfully clarifies some of the deep-seated bias and willful ignorance that characterize so much of the mainstream media. David Petraeus stopped being a news story for outlets like Time when he began succeeding. Is there any doubt that if he had fared differently, al Qaeda in Iraq (or al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as the New York Times calls the organization) would have either walked away with the prize--or at the very least ranked higher than J.K. Rowling?