I’m a little late on this one but I want to talk about it anyway. Laura Ingraham recently told LeBron James to shut up and dribble. Her charges against LeBron of being unintelligible, ungrammatical, and “ignorant” (further proving my point) seemed to be dog whistling and she was denounced pretty swiftly. She leveled this same charge against the Dixie Chicks and Jimmy Kimmel, “Shut up and sing,” and “Shut up and make us laugh,” respectively.

This isn’t just Laura Ingraham, though. It’s a lot of us on social media, myself included.

This occurred to me years ago when Baltimore Oriole Luke Scott made a bunch of birther comments about Obama. Scott also said Obama’s a socialist marxist blah blah blah. It wasn’t the first time that anyone had said that about Obama, nor the last, but what I wanted to say was, “Shut up and play baseball.” That only occurred to me because I didn’t agree with his views. If he had said that he thought Obama was doing a great job as president, I would have thought, “Cool,” and then paid it no mind.

Why do we care if celebrities give us their opinion about politics? The primary reason, I think, is that actors, musicians, and athletes don’t have the qualifications to speak about politics. That’s a good point. But we have to recognize that that’s true of the vast majority of people and of American voters, myself included. Hell, why do Sean Hannity and Michael Moore get to write books about politics? Because of their political bona fides?

For another reason, I’ll illustrate with two celebrities on the left and right, respectively, who I’ve wanted to tell to shut up many many times: Susan Sarandon and Curt Schilling. I was really disappointed in Susan Sarandon’s Hillary bashing during the 2016 election and beyond. Curt Schilling has hard right views and gives voice to the kind of people who usually only appear in reddit comments. Just today he furthered the conspiracy theory about paid actors speaking up about the school shooting in Florida and, frankly, he’s ruining the 2004 ALCS for me.

They are both celebrities which means that, for good or ill, they have a large platform to express their views. They both speak on television and in print and the things that they say probably reach millions of people. That privilege wasn’t earned, though, or at least not for the right reasons. It was given to them because of their fame and their willingness to speak. The effect is also cumulative because the more they speak, the more they get coverage for, “What did they say this time?”

It’s unfair but let’s take a step back. They’re both private citizens. They have their own views. They talk about their own views. I think we need to stop saying “shut up” and start recognizing it for what it is, “I strongly disagree with that person.”

I’m not even trying to invoke the first amendment in its most basic interpretation here. “Everyone has a right to say anything they want!” Not exactly. They won’t be thrown in jail for it and there won’t be a law against it but people say vile things and there should be consequences for those things. Curt Schilling himself has been fired for his views expressed on social media.

Telling a celebrity to shut up is lazy. It takes us off the hook for actually considering what that person is saying and articulating the reasons why we disagree. But there are other options. Ignore them, don’t read the article, turn the channel, unfollow them.

Perhaps people fear the reach of celebrities and their ability to sway people or spread false information. Kyrie Irving still believes the earth is flat and in doing so is testing me on the limits of my own rule here. During the red scare, the witch hunt began in Hollywood with the Hollywood Ten. People were afraid that communist screenwriters were disseminating their vile politics through the movies. To be fair, a few tried, and yet here we are, pretty damn capitalist.

Despite what Susan Sarandon wanted, I voted for Hillary in 2016. And I have no need to listen to Curt Schilling at all regarding anything, not even baseball (I don’t hate him for being a right wing Republican, I hate him for being on the Phillies). Maybe I’m wrong but I just don’t think the power of celebrity is enough to change peoples’ minds, not mine anyway.

Though perhaps I’m falling prey to one of the most insidious American myths of all: I’m an individual and my views are formed by my intellect and nothing more.