If ever any proof was needed of Time magazine's irrelevance as a chronicle of current events, it comes with the announcement that G.Dubya Bush has been named its Man of the Year for 2004.

Now if we were looking at this award in the same context as those to Adolf Hitler (1938), Josef Stalin (1939 and 1942), Nikita Krushchev (1957) and the Ayatollah Khomeini (1979), then giving the Man of the Year award to a global scoundrel would make sense. It has more to do with the fact that every US president since FD Roosevelt (1932, 1934 and 1941) scores at least one mention on the MOTY cover.

Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Clinton and Bush Minor all achieved the honour in the year of presidential election victory. Bush has scored after both of his election "wins".

The citation for 2004 by Time Magazine reads as follows:

For sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively), for reshaping the rules of politics to fit his ten-gallon-hat leadership style and for persuading a majority of voters that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years, George W. Bush is TIME's 2004 Person of the Year.

Which reminds me, how is the Ohio recount going?

At this moment, Time.com's online poll "Do you agree with Time's choice for person of the year?" is running 56.5% in GWB's favour. I am one of the remaining 43.5% of the 3166 voters to date.

Time's seventeen entries on the "People Who Mattered" list included a horse by the name of Smarty Jones, and the cast of Desperate Housewives. If I was choosing a Person(s) of the Year from the "People Who Mattered" list, I would go for Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko. But I'd rather chuck the list away and go for the people of Darfur.