You Have Part of My Attention: Mark Zuckerberg Named Time Magazine Person of the Year

Alternate headline: "If you were the inventors of Time magazine's Person of the Year, you would have invented Time magazine's Person of the Year." What started as a rough morning for the makers of The Social Network turned around in a hurry. Late last night the San Diego Critics Society broke ranks with their film critic brethren and voted Winter's Bone as top film of 2010 instead of The Social Network (punishment will be meted out later this afternoon). Before David Fincher and friends could cry in their Kashi Go Lean, though, Time magazine swooped in this morning and named Facebook head honcho Mark Zuckerberg as their Person of the Year. Suck on that, Ree Dolly!

Zuckerberg finished ahead of the Tea Party (yes, the whole Tea Party), fan-voted choice Julian Assange, and even Lady Gaga. "Assange won our poll by a great margin," Time Managing Editor Richard Stengel said on the Today show. "But of course, Lady Gaga was No. 2. We take all that into account." Translation: Your online votes were meaningless and we picked Zuckerberg months ago.

At 26, the Facebook co-founder is the second-youngest person ever named as POY -- Charles Lindbergh was only 25 when he was named the mag's first Person of the Year in 1927 -- and joins a list of luminaries that includes the Pope John Paul II, FDR, JFK, MLK, the Apollo 8 astronauts and the endangered Earth. If that isn't enough, the selection of Zuckerberg is also more grist for The Social Network's Oscar campaign; The Fighter and The King's Speech might be based on real-life men of varying degrees of power, but you don't see Micky Ward or King George VI rubbing shoulders with Planet Earth. Think about how that will look on a "For Your Consideration" ad...

· Mark Zuckerberg is Time's 2010 Person of the Year [MSNBC]