Some time in 2003 I read an article that blew me away. Written by Neal Pollack, the title was a succinct “Just Shut Up” . In a wonderfully uncensored diatribe against the bedlam of pro and anti war voices that were peaking at that moment, Pollack says:
Nobody gives a shit what anti-war or pro-war writers think. Really. So shut up. That goes double for poets. Shut the hell up, poets. Everybody just shut up.
Pollack went on to smack down everybody. (Even our very own Arundhati Roy gets an honorable mention when he roundly criticizes a truly horrendous poem dedicated to her by Daniella Gioseffi!)
He ended his diatribe against assorted lefties, fulminating righties and the rest with :
So to all of us who deem ourselves writers in this time of war, I can only say, in the immortal words of the great folk singer Kelly Osbourne:
Shut up!
A few months later, Slate.com did an equally marvelous deconstruction of the Bill O ‘Reilly “Shut Up”. For those of you with strong stomachs who watch Bill “Falafel” O’Reilly, you know that he has elevated “shut up ” to an art form:
he uses it as a place-holder for an idea still formulating in his brain. As a way to begin a sentence, end it, or punctuate it.(link)
For the first time in my life, I am going to take a life-lesson from Bill O and just: Shut Up!
Not on everything – no fears there – but I think this whole Presidential Election has made me realize that I am DONE with the political process. You have seen my earlier reactions here and here. What began as simmering discontent at sexism and misgyny has morphed into a full-blown rage. And as a result I find myself in a bizarro world where I am defending those whose positions I abhor. I catch myself watching FOX news so that I do not have to see the clowns on MSNBC and CNN. I have lost all perspective and emotion is definitely clouding my judgment.
As there is no chance that Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow,Campbell Brown, Alex Castellanos, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper etc are going just shut up and let the people decide for themselves who they want as President – I will have to do the next best thing.
I am going to Shut up. No more posts or comments from me on the American Presidential Election until it is over and someone wins.
PS: I will keep writing on other stuff – can’t shut me up that much! 
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