People everywhere are collectively groaning over the choice to name Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, as Time’s Person of the Year. Who would make such an idiotic, shallow, superficial choice?

Well, when you consider that the driving force behind his nomination was Meghan McCain, it suddenly makes sense. Meggie Mac wrote another ghastly column, wasting space on The Daily Beast this week defending her choice to nominate Zuckerberg.

I was one of the people on Time’s panel to nominate and argue over who was most deserving of the title. My two choices were the Tea Party and Mark Zuckerberg. The Time panel consisted of myself, Joe Trippi, Google’s Marissa Miller (who petitioned hard for Steve Job’s to be considered for person of the year), Wyclef Jean, and the executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement Daisy Khan. Everyone chose both interesting and year poignant candidates. Other notable people that were discussed were Nancy Pelosi, Glenn Beck and the country of Haiti.

Hang on — stop right there. Did I just see Meghan McCain write Steve Job’s? As in, she added an apostrophe into the name of Steve Jobs, the co-founder and CEO of Apple? And someone, please, explain to me what exactly this sentence means:

Everyone chose both interesting and year poignant candidates.

Perhaps the most pressing question that needs to be answered is why in the name of God this blonde bimbo hasn’t been assigned the desperately needed team of editors to scrutinize every word of drivel that she writes. But this is about Mark Zuckerberg, so let’s continue.

Time’s choice is like the man himself, innovative and controversial. The “Person of the Year” is an illusive title that has historically showcased, for better or worse, the individual who has had the most distinctive impact on the previous year. In 2010 Facebook hit its five hundred millionth member. A feat no social network has ever achieved before. David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network was also released to both commercial and critical acclaim. Mark Zuckerberg has become the first true millenial rockstar, and he is ushering in a completely new era.

At the end of the day, Mark Zuckerberg really is the most forward thinking and relevant candidate, even beating Julian Assange and the Tea Party. He transcends all of these people and, dare I say, even countries because all of these subjects are more than likely be read about, discussed, and debated via users on—where else?—Facebook. I believe that Mark Zuckerberg is the Henry Ford of our times and Facebook is the Model-T.

There you have it, folks: according to brilliant pundit Meghan McCain, Mark Zuckerberg is just as genius as Henry Ford, and Facebook — a website that’s primarily used for wasting time — is an invention as historically significant as the Model-T.

Previous people to have been awarded the now-defunct honor of being name the Time Person of the Year include Charles Lindbergh, Walter Chrysler, Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, Martin Luther King Jr, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Bill Gates. More recently, esteemed winners have included… er, Barack Obama and you. Mark Zuckerberg cements it: the Person of the Year award has officially jumped the shark.

Sure, a lot of people use Facebook for lots of different reasons. What has Mark Zuckerberg done this year, in 2010, to make him the Person of the Year? Well… his website inspired a movie that made a lot of money. A lot of people signed up to use Facebook. And… that’s about it.

Other people considered? Well, there’s Julian Assange, who while not likeable to most normal human beings certainly had a major impact on the world this year, thanks to Wikileaks. He also came in first in Time’s online voting poll. Mark Zuckerberg came in tenth, behind Lady Gaga, Glenn Beck, Steve Jobs (or Job’s, as Meggie Mac spells it), the Chilean miners, and the unemployed American. The Tea Party movement? While it didn’t make it into the top ten of the online voting poll, that would also arguably be a better choice.

Let’s see, founder of an internet site famously used for wasting time vs. a movement that redefined politics and halted socialism in its creeping tracks. I guess for Meggie Mac, it’s no contest. After all, those Tea Partiers sure do like Sarah Palin a lot, who is Meggie Mac’s arch-nemesis, so clearly she can’t side with them. (For that matter, Sarah Palin would’ve been a better choice than Mark Zuckerberg, too.)

Hey, maybe next year we can make the Kardashians the Persons of the Year! Their TV show is really cool and stuff! Right, Meggie Mac?

In all seriousness, while Facebook has indeed impacted many, many people, there was nothing in the year 2010 that made Facebook particularly newsworthy. As Ed Morrissey pointed out yesterday, Time is a little behind on the times.

Apparently, Time didn’t know that Facebook launched in February 2004, and had achieved the status of most trafficked social network by the end of 2008. If the issue was impact, it seems as though Time is two years too late in awarding this.

Honestly, though, what other real and significant impact has Facebook had? It has spawned a Hollywood movie, which is probably why Time bothered to notice it after more than six years. It’s a popular meeting space, and it allows people to reconnect to old friends, as well as waste vast amounts of time with imaginary farms and wannabe virtual Mafia dons. Facebook is mostly a time suck. At least Twitter had an impact last year in the attempt by the Iranian people to rebel against the dictatorship in Tehran.

But of course, Meghan McCain, political genius, wouldn’t need to bother with finding out stuff like that, would she? There was that Facebook movie that came out, y’all!! Come on!

Of course, while Meggie Mac might be the intellectual lightweight responsible for arguing that Mark Zuckerberg deserves the title of 2010’s Person of the Year, the blame ultimately falls with Time itself. What else did they expect? When you put a moron like Meghan McCain on your panel to choose the Person of the Year, what else are you going to get but a moronic choice?