Take Jonah Goldberg. Please. This is the guy who said that “Sub-Saharan Africa could pretty much vanish from the world economy tomorrow and it would have virtually no effect on the global economy.” No effect from the loss of South African gold, Nigerian oil and West African coffee, diamonds and chocolate.

It’s Goldberg who said, “I think {hint: first clue} all intelligent, patriotic and informed people can agree: It would be great if the U.S. could find an Iraqi Augusto Pinochet. In fact, an Iraqi Pinochet would be even better than an Iraqi Castro.”

It’s Goldberg who said, “I predict that Iraq won’t have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it.” He predicted that on Feb. 8, 2005.

OK, OK, everybody knows Goldberg is a dumbass and Friedman is supposed to be smart. Now what other pundit is supposed to be smart but is actually in the running for stupidest, if not stupider than Friedman?

How about David Brooks? University of Chicago, so he must be smart. Right? I mean, isn’t that where Milton Friedman’s from? John Ashcroft? Antonin Scalia, Paul Wolfowitz and Barack Obama?

A little while ago Brooks wrote: “Americans are having a debate about how to proceed in Iraq, but we are not having a strategic debate about retracting American power and influence…What’s happening today is just another chapter in that long expansionist story…they don’t question the need for America to play a leading role. They take it for granted that the U.S. is going to be in the Middle East for a long time to come…The hegemon will change. The hegemon will do more negotiating. But the hegemon will live.”

Which Americans is he talking about? Where’s the evidence of that claim? And god help us all…the hegemon? Brooks admits he’s influenced by Ender’s Game. Stoopid.

Brooks also believes that “Now it’s evident that if you want to understand the future of the Democratic Party you can learn almost nothing from the bloggers, billionaires and activists on the left who make up the ‘netroots.’ You can learn most of what you need to know by paying attention to two different groups – high school educated women in the Midwest, and the old Clinton establishment in Washington.”

Well, David seems to have learned nothing from the 2006 election. That’s ingloriously dumb.

Y’know, this stuff is contagious. I’m feeling stoopider by the minute. Somebody else carry on.

Oh, and with so many pundits tied for stupidest, and with stupidest therefore losing its meaning, maybe it’s time for a new word to describe the particular kind of agonizing, astonishing stupidity infecting these chatterers, a stupidity that, by its epidemic viral insemination of the public media and discourse, causes an exquisitely immobilizing depression in its otherwise (and previously) intelligent victims.

Punditest?