Obama is Time's Person of the Year and Palin is still gross.

So Time has named Barack Obama Person of the Year. I may be a bit biased, but I think that there are a lot of reasons to argue why it was an obvious, yet good, choice. Charismatic and influential and there's still more than a month before he even takes office, but he is preparing for the switch swiftly and efficiently and has, so far, done a bang up job of picking a team to work with.

And then you go to Time's list of runners up. I get why she's on the list. After all, it's been a pretty stellar year for Sarah Palin. Going from no-name Alaska governor/"hockey mom" to a potential Republican Presidential nominee in 4 years is no small feat. And let's face it, I don't think I am alone in saying that I thought she would just putter out and fade back into the Alaskan wilderness, what will all of the scandals involving family and abuse of power, not to mention just being a 'crazy hillbilly on a shopping spree at Neiman Marcus coast to coast leaving in her wake crying assistants with huge personal credit card bills.'

But the Palin train just won't stop at the station. The time article does a decent job of covering the good and the bad, I guess. It touches briefly on the icky stuff, but it also seems to contain this overarching admiration which I will never understand. To a degree, it's been a better year than not for the Alaskan governor, but after all of it, can we really think that she is even fit to be in the running for person of the year? As much as I hope she just fades back into nothingness, I'd love it even more if the media would just let Palin-fever die out.

In the article, she is called a "one-woman rescue team for the Republican ticket." Really? Because while she may have united the Christian conservative movement behind the Republican ticket this go around, she scared the hell out of any right-leaning people I know who don't fall under the Christian conservative right - and scared most of them to the point to where they didn't even vote for McCain in the end. So I fully believe it could be argued that she lost as many or more votes than she gained for the campaign. Christian conservative were almost certainly going to vote Republican anyway - it is the Independents and fiscal conservatives that Palin needs and did not and probably will not get. The Time article quotes Limbaugh as saying "Palin = Guns, Babies, Jesus."

Maybe in previous elections the guns, babies, and Jesus bit worked, but in this election where we are still waging a war abroad most people aren't even sure we should have gotten into in the first place and facing failing economies here in the U.S. and around the world, suddenly those wedge issues all but disappeared for everyone except people like Sarah Palin.

Plus, Palin's general ignorance on any issues that were important didn't help, along with the "token woman" idea that Hillary supporters would vote Palin just because she was a woman. While I think that it is insane for Palin to be questioned on her ability to govern and be a mother at the same time, I also think that it is insane to hear Palin call herself a feminist or to be seen as any sort of a voice for women since not a single woman I know agreed with a single thing that came out of Palin's mouth or even remotely liked her at all. Certainly none of them voted for her purely on the basis that she's a woman. Part of me almost hopes she does stick around for 2012, purely because I believe what will happen this election will happen again: Independent and non-Christian conservatives will be scared off leaving her with another loss. But a tiny part of me asks, What if?? and frankly, I'm not much of a gambler, so I think I'll just stick to hoping the Palin's best year was 2008. Read more On "Obama is Time's Person of the Year and Palin is still gross."!