Note to media columnists wringing their hands over the ubiquitous presence of Ann Coulter last week: Self-reflection doesn't fool anyone.

Howard Kurtz, WaPo: "Of course, since even bad publicity is still publicity, this column, too, will probably make the Coulter cash register ring a few more times."

David Carr, NYT: "You get the idea. Wagging tongue, wagging fingers and before you know it, soon enough you have hundreds of hits on Google News for days to come (this column among them)."

Of course, while Kurtz laments the fact that the television networks continue to give airtime to "a woman whose vituperation they can decry even as they milk it for market share," he's more than ready to keep her name afloat by joining the parade of critics. ("Is it time for the media to stop lavishing attention on Ann Coulter?" Not before I get another column out of her, it isn't!) Carr's more explicit about how Coulter's looks and wardrobe keep her from being "just one more nut living in Mom's basement," adding, "The fact that she is one of the leading political writers of our age says something about the rest of us."

And it's like, okay, fine, Ann Coulter's a bottom feeder, tell me something I don't know. If you really want her to disappear, ignore her sorry ass, and start paying attention to some of the dozens of other political books that have been published in the last month. Ideally—and I know full well I dropped the ball here for the sake of a cheap Omen joke—the fact that Crown pumped a huge marketing budget into a massive first printing doesn't automatically make her a news story.

UPDATE: If Coulter's a plagiarist, though, then that would certainly be worth pinning down with the same sort of scrutiny conservative bloggers showed towards those old memos on Bush's National Guard service CBS News got stuck with back in '04.