Why do we pay any attention to this man?

Donald Trump offers President Obama $5 million for his favorite charity if he will release his college transcripts — which no president as ever been asked to release — and the media are all over it as though it were news.

Ann Coulter called the president an epithet for a person with developmental disabilities and refuses to apologize.

Sarah Palin talks about the president’s “shuck and jive.”

John Sununu, who works for the Romney campaign, says Gen. Colin Powell only endorsed the president because they’re both African-American.

All of them are all over the news, although Sununu did walk back his comment. Still, he said it, and it’s obvious he’s only sorry it made the news, as it should have, since he works for the Romney campaign.

But the other three, Trump, Palin and Coulter, don’t ever deserve to have a camera or a microphone pointed in their direction. They are celebrities only because we insist on paying attention to them, and their contributions to the political conversation are all negative and only for self-aggrandization.

Trump is an arrogant, self-centered rich bastard with an incredibly bloated sense of his own importance. The media should refuse to fuel it.

Coulter is a shrill, mean-spirited and rude “pundit” who has never held public office. Her only claim to fame is that she can out-shout other people on talk shows.

Palin is a half-term governor who lost her bid for higher office and insists on hanging around to deliver her mindless drivel on Fox News.

Why are they even in the news? It likely stems from Americans’ love of celebrity. These people are celebrities because we continue to pay attention to them.

The best thing we can do is refuse to participate. Don’t forward their antics in your e-mail; don’t share their bull on Facebook; write letters to the editors of newspapers that continue to pay attention to them and ask that they stop.

They do not deserve our attention; we don’t have to give it to them.