Of Time magazine, Scott Hinderaker of Power Line writes: "No offense, but my man of the year is not You. My man of the year is John Bolton -- a model public servant, a stand-up man who deeply understands the nature of the war in which we are engaged."

I think Steve Hayward has a great take as well:

Watching the long, slow decay of Henry Luce’s once-great Time magazine has been painful. The beginning of the end might be dated to the ridiculous 1967 cover story, “Is God Dead?,” which was followed up with a 1989 cover, “Is Government Dead?” that was essentially the same story, only Time didn’t know it (government being the secular liberal substitute for God). Now Time has lost its faith in its own editorial judgment entirely. The selection of “You” as their laureate for 2006 represents the apotheosis of the modernist view that impersonal forces and mass processes drive history more than individuals, combined with a politically correct fear of naming an odious person like Iran’s Ahmaninejad as it did the past with Hitler and Ayatollah Khomeini.

This has been a long time (so to speak) in coming. In 1999 Time explained that it did not name Winston Churchill its “Person of the Century” (he had been Time’s “Man of the Half-Century” in 1950) because “the passage of time can alter our perspective. . . . Churchill turned out to be a romantic refugee from a previous era who ended up on the wrong side of history.” Then, two years later, Time noted Rudy Giuliani’s affinity for Churchill when it selected him Person of the Year, noting “a bright magic at work when one great leader reaches into the past and finds another waiting to guide him,” which was practically an admission that it had shortchanged Churchill before.

If Time magazine had a shred of intellectual rigor left, they would now abolish their “Person of the Year” designation.

Time's Man of the Year award was originally conceived as something other than the Mother of All Puff Pieces. Time founder Henry Luce swam against the stream of Marxist determinism which held that history unfolded according to cold, impersonal forces. He believed individuals - i.e. great men and women - matter. He said the original award should go to the person "who most affected the news or our lives, for good or ill, this year." That was the point of picking Charles Lindbergh as the first Man of the Year - because he, and he alone, seemed to be ushering in a New Age. Hitler was MOY in 1938 because he might have been ushering in a Dark Age. You are Person of the Year because the editors of Time want to live in a Feel-Good Age where everyone is empowered (hence Time's rationalizations about the people-power of the Internet).

Of course, Time has punted many times before. For example, in 1988, beating the fierce competition, Earth was named "Planet of the Year." No doubt that choice sounded very clever in the editorial board meeting.

Time's 2001 decision, naming Rudy Giuliani person of the year, was even more telling. This was a true profile-in-cowardice moment. There was no intellectually defensible standard for suggesting that the able mayor affected the news or our lives more than Osama bin Laden, who at the time seemed at least to be the Gavrilo Princip of the 21st century. (Princip was the fellow who launched World War I, which in turn launched World War II and the Cold War.)

The only reason not to give bin Laden the title Person of the Year - other than a purely commercial concern about newsstand sales - is that being Person of the Year has become a compliment. Sure, I suppose groups like the Shriners or the Knights of Columbus have always had their Persons of the Year, and they always meant it in a good way. Nonetheless, readers in 1938 and 1979 understood that Hitler and Khomeini weren't being honored as humanitarians.

What's changed is that these days celebrity is always a boon. There was a time when infamy mattered, when disrepute had teeth. But infamy has been purged from the lexicon. Now, any publicity is good publicity. Just ask Paris Hilton. Time's sister publication, People magazine, didn't start the trend, but it did accelerate it wildly. And it seems that People's values have seeped into the water supply over at Time, so much so that Time would rather name everyone, and therefore no one, the Person of the Year.

The one thing Time has going for it is that they've united all of us people of the year in derision at their magazine.