(For previous posts in this series, see here.)

One does not have to go very deep to understand why third tier pundits are not worth spending much time on. In making my criticisms of them, I have to confess that I do not take the time to read these people’s books, so readers will have to take that into account in weighing my comments on them. Fortunately there are people among the first-tier pundits and other commentators who freely and voluntarily take on this truly thankless task and document the bankruptcy of these people and their ideas. You couldn’t pay me enough to waste my time reading their books when there are so many worthwhile books to read. I have read enough articles written by them and about them and watched some interviews, sufficient I think to judge their caliber. It is of course theoretically possible that if I spend the hours necessary to wade through all the prolific output of these third tier pundits, I may find that they have produced works of extreme profundity and elegance that their critics have overlooked. But given the evidence from their other works, I would put the chances of that about as close to zero as you can imagine.
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When I was interviewed recently on Blog Talk Radio about my 2005 posts about the people I call third tier pundits and the baleful influence that they have on political discourse, I didn’t really have the time to go more deeply into how it is that they got to play the particular role they currently play. It would be a mistake to think that they are merely the flotsam brought to the surface by media currents. They play a vacuous but integral part in a propaganda machine.

Third tier pundits are those people who occupy almost the bottom rung of the punditry world, the value of their contributions rising just barely above that of the people who write graffiti on bathroom walls. The most prominent examples of this species are people like Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Jonah Goldberg, and Dinesh D’Souza but unfortunately there are many, many more. In fact, it seems like there is a seemingly endless supply of such people, available at a moment’s notice to appear on TV and radio and fill up newspaper op-ed space or the shelves of bookstores, spouting a predictable line of nonsense. But while they add little, they fill a significant niche in the media world and it is interesting to see what the purpose of that niche is and how they fit into the overall structure of the media. As Jonathan Schwarz says about the whole species:
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