I’ve been noticing a trend in the life-cycle of pundits. They tend to start off with something unique and interesting to say. Maybe they film a documentary (Moore, Spurlock), maybe they write a book (Goldberg, Coulter, Friedman), maybe they get a TV show (O’Reilly, Dobbs). They begin to gain a following and some notoriety. Their book is photographed in the hands of the President. Their followers begin to worship them. Then things begin to go bad.

They start to believe the hype about themselves. They have “a brand” and publishers and producers push them capitalize on it. Unfortunately, good intellectual work takes time and publishers don’t want to wait. So they start putting out crap that is designed to appeal to the baser nature of their followers.

Take Bernard Goldberg. In February of 2001 he released his book Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News . It became a hit with those who felt there was a liberal bias in the media. His premise was the bias in the media was not deliberate. The bias existed because of the insular nature of the media. It was a new concept and it made more sense than a vast left-wing media conspiracy. Goldberg went on the talk-show circuit, FNC, etc. He sold a lot of books and spent 7 weeks at number 1 on the NYT bestseller list.

What is his latest book? 110 People Who Are Screwing Up America: (and Al Franken Is #37). Hardly the pinnacle of original thought and research.

So I’ve decided to classify this “Coulter-Syndrome” and the process of going from an original researcher and voice to a cheap partisan hack “Coulterize”.