Actually,  I hope none of you are even wasting 5 seconds of time thinking about the fame-starved loony-tunes who crashed the White House State Dinner this past week.  I certainly would not have been were it not for this AP story reporting that Mr. and Mrs. “Even a Tux and Gown Can’t Hide Our Essential Stupidity” are now trying to sell the rights to an interview.

No shock, of course.  “Cashing-in” after having done something stupid, and having media outlets willing to pay,  is a great American tradition that includes all sorts of  noble behavior. In fact,  I think  Michaele and Tareq Salahi have earned themselves a place of honor right up there with people who dump medical waste on beaches,  laugh at people when they trip and fall, or bring  whoopee cushions with them to church.

We are talking major-league idiocy.

But their stupidity might, I repeat might, be about to be quickly surpassed.  Because any media outlet with even a pretense of seriousness that actually does pay the Salahis for an interview, or that in any way enriches these pathetic jokers, will immediately knock them out of first place on the National Registry of Shameless  Stupidity.

The world will always  have jerks.  Many of us, myself included, will on occasion be those jerks. And the world will always have people willing to reward jerks.

But there is no reason that the rest of us  have to stand back and be silently complicit.

This is the precise moment when we should be watching,  and watching closely, for any evidence that the Salahis have been paid for an interview.  If this happens, the name of the offending media outlet should be blogged and tweeted and printed and sung and shouted until the whole world knows who decided that this was valuable news.

Then, only one task will remain: Each of us will have to ask ourselves  how and why we might have been complicit members of an audience that, again and again, has proven itself willing to watch these paid interviews with people like Mr. and Mrs. “Even a Tux and Gown Can’t Hide Our Essential Stupidity.’