He doesn’t use the phrase I coined -- “The Age of Unseriousness” -- but he might as well have.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, an economist by profession but a man whose work in the paper of record easily tops the best of our lame punditocracy, writes, in Friday’s Times, about the absurdities of the media’s coverage of the still ongoing (no matter what the “leading lights” of the networks and cable outlets would have you believe) presidential campaign.

It’s so simple it’s amazing it takes a Princeton professor to point out the obvious, including: “[d]on’t talk about clothes”; “look at the candidates’ policy proposals”; “[b]eware of personal anecdotes”; “[l]ook at the candidates’ records”; “[d]on’t fall for political histrionics”; and “[i]t’s not about you.”

More tomorrow from your national and local newspapers about the Democrats’ wardrobes, facial features, hairstyles, family histories, genealogy, and eating habits, along with their stubborn unwillingness to ask Margaret Carlson why she wears eyeglasses and not contact lenses.