The Editor Who Puts Dictators In Their Places

How does one quantify evil into a tidy list?

We ask because Parade magazine published its annual World's Worst Dictators issue last week. (One imagines that it's hotly awaited in the dictator community, sending scoundrels rifling through their Sunday inserts.)

Parade assigned the undertaking to contributing editor David Wallechinsky, author of the "Book of Lists" series and a forthcoming volume about tyrants. He observes the evildoings of evildoers, "like some people follow 'American Idol,' " he says.

When making his selections, Wallechinsky says he considers freedom of expression, the right to vote, etc. "And I give extra credit to dictators who torture and kill their own.

"I hate to sound overly flippant about this."

If you missed last Sunday's Parade: Omar al-Bashir of Sudan wears the winner's laurel again, followed by Kim Jong Il of North Korea, Than Shwe of Burma, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (up from No. 9 last year) and -- with a bullet -- Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan (up from 15).

You can imagine the barstool debates this might ignite: "How can you say Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea [No. 10] is worse than Boungnang Vorachith of Laos [No. 19]? Gimme a break, pal!"

But that's the sport of it. America loves the linear certainty of lists and rankings, whether it's U.S. News doing colleges or VH1 doing the 50 most awesomely bad songs of all time or despots committing atrocities.

"These are subjective," cautions Wallechinsky, who says he considers data provided by governments and human rights entities. He doesn't run numbers through a computer (number of people tortured, elections denied), but nonetheless serves as a one-man Bowl Championship Series-like ranking service for the planet's most heinous. We debriefed him by phone from his home in Santa Monica, Calif.:

Q. So how do you figure that King Mswati III of Swaziland (No. 12) is only one unit of evil worse than Isayas Afewerki of Eritrea (No. 13)?

A. Afewerki is a worse person. He's more of a thug. But he has less control of his people than Mswati does.

Q. Any potential "hot" dictators we should keep an eye on for next year's rankings?