However wrong the rankings might be, I have to admit Time’s “Best of Everything” lists are pretty fun to browse. In fact, if I made a list of reasons to check Time.com, the magazine’s immortal lists would be the first and last item on it.

But, really? The journalists at Time think “Occupy Wall Street” is the No. 1 U.S. news story of the year — ahead of the GOP primaries, the economy, the Gabby Giffords shooting and the debt ceiling crisis? What, oh what, was the rationale? I know you’re dying to read this:

To some, Occupy Wall Street is the left-wing iteration of the Tea Party, directing their rage not at big government but at the big banks that gutted the world economy and took billions in bailouts from the U.S. government while awarding themselves hefty bonuses.

But many in the movement see their cause as part of a more global zeitgeist, in keeping with the anti-austerity demonstrations in Europe and the leaderless uprisings of the Arab Spring. …

[T]he sheer persistence of the occupations, galvanized by incidents of heavy-handed policing in New York and California that shocked the nation, have given the protesters’ appeals for economic justice a weight that may play a real role in the upcoming presidential election.

So much in that description that I just love. For example, I love that, according to Time, the banks took billions in bailouts from the government (i.e. the government didn’t voluntarily give taxpayer dollars to ’em). I love that, according to Time, heavy-handed policing just came out of nowhere to galvanize the movement. I love that, according to Time, OWS, which just might play a “real role” in the upcoming presidential election, matters more than the state of the economy to which the movement itself was only one of many responses.

Let’s postulate a more plausible rationale for Time’s implausible choice: Must be that OWS is the only story that kinda sorta looks good for a certain struggling incumbent. And it only kinda sorta looks good for Obama because the MSM and Democrats have attempted to link the amorphous movement to the president’s jobs act and his present class warfare pitch, all while carefully overlooking the in-your-face violence that characterizes Occupy. Note that the Time description references over-the-top police action, but fails to mention the more than 400 incidents of violence, vandalism and outrageous behavior that have accrued to Occupiers. Now that might have been a reason to name OWS No. 1.

No wonder Commentary’s John Podhoretz tweeted out this new nickname for Henry Luce’s once-innocent baby: “Time, the magazine that keeps embarrassing itself.”