Al Gore Favorite to be 'Time' Person of the Year

Rush Limbaugh might as well take a nitroglycerin tablet right now, because it sounds like Al Gore is going to be Time's person of the year for 2007.

Three of the five panelists at the newsweekly's annual discussion -- Brian Williams, Whoopi Goldberg and MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe -- nominated either the former vice president or the green movement he champions to be this year's honoree.

And Time's managing editor, Rick Stengel, told me afterwards that he'd polled his staff and found Gore to be the "runaway favorite."

As for going with a concept rather than a person -- for instance, the word "green," which was Goldberg's suggestion -- it doesn't sound likely. "I like the idea of it being an individual," says Stengel.

But hang on: I've also been told that the "in-house betting" at Time has Chinese president Hu Jintao carrying the day. I asked Stengel about this scenario, and he sounded favorably disposed. "China touches absolutely everything," he said. "Sometimes, we tend to be parochial in our thinking. I just want to make sure we really broaden our thinking."

My other takeaway from the luncheon: George Allen is bucknutty! I know, I know: We already sort of knew this about the former Virginia governor and senator after he tried to get away with using a weird racial slur at a campaign appearance. So maybe I should say George Allen is still bucknutty. He used part of his time allotment to tell Whoopi Goldberg that the film Ghost "really, really touched me," and he patronizingly told Brian Williams, "If you did the Nightly News the way you do this, you'd have everyone watching you. You have a great sense of humor."

Two other notes: First, MySpace's DeWolfe is not the world's best-informed guy. Responding to Allen's suggestion that Gen. David Petraeus be named POY, DeWolfe fumbled, "In terms of Petraeus -- is that how you say his name? I'm not super familiar with what he's done."

Also, the idea of a POY cover package on "The Dictators," suggested by one of my commenters, did, in fact, come up; Williams mooted the idea in passing, but his preferred choice was "Mother Earth." Ew.