One of the facts of life in a democracy (or, in our case, a republic with democratically elected leaders) is that everyone’s vote is absolutely and unequivocally equal. This fundamental idea is the bedrock foundation of modern democracies. Everyone has an equal opportunity to speak out, to participate, and to be heard before decisions that affect them are made.

As good and true as those things are however, that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone’s opinion is equal. Everyone has different experience, education, and outlook. Some people have spent more time thinking about an issue. Some people are more qualified to make certain decisions because they’ve studied an issue closely. Some people have direct working knowledge in one aspect or another. Some people just have more common sense.

Unfortunately, that means that the opposite is true as well: some opinions are complete rubbish. Some opinions are given rashly. Ask me what we should have for dinner and I’ll make a random decision off the cuff that could easily be wrong. (“What do you mean we’re out of ice cream?”) I’m not an idiot. My opinion is not meaningless – but I didn’t think about it or do the research necessary to come to a reasonable conclusion.

Some opinions are given with no sense of perspective. Ask a man who’s smoked since he was 13 if cigarettes are bad for your health and he might just say they’re not. We all know they are, but nothing bad has ever happened to him. He’s got plenty of experience – but he’s obviously never seen the statistics or read any of the studies. He just knows what he knows.

Some opinions are given with no first hand experience. Yeah, in theory surgery is just a snip, snip here and a snip, snip there, but in practice it’s slightly more complicated than that. I, for one, wouldn’t have the slightest clue what an appendix looks like, let alone how to remove it – but if all he’s got is appendicitis, all we’d have to do is go in and remove it, right? No one in their right mind would ever take my advice on surgery or anesthesia or anything like it.

Some opinions are ideological without a rational basis. This, I think, is the greatest criticism one can make for why religion should be kept out of the big decisions in life. If you’re letting your parent’s make the decision on who to marry for you because of some guy’s interpretation of a book written hundreds of years ago, you could be in for a life of misery. If you’re in favor of a strong dollar and you want to hike interest rates in the middle of a recession, you might want to go back and ask yourself why you want the dollar to be strong. If someone’s paying you to to be the company spokesman, you may never admit that those tanks are leaking – even if you won’t let your children drink the tap water.

This, fundamentally, is why everyone should be thinking for themselves. This is why we don’t believe everything we read on a blog or the internet. It’s why we don’t bother listening to TV ads. It’s the reason we don’t listen to that guy at work (we all know know who he is) who always claims to know better (he doesn’t). A healthy degree of skepticism is an incredibly important thing for every well-adjusted person to have.

When it comes to democracy, however, especially in the media, we tend to forget that there is a difference between having a vote and having influence. We forget that there’s a difference between having an opinion and having a good opinion. We forget that just because someone has the right to talk, no one has an obligation to listen. We also tend to forget that, morons aside, (and there are always morons on both sides) people will decide on an issue based on the merits, not based on what one crazy person says.

The people who get so worked up over celebrates making political statements are always overreacting. The story on the evening news is never about “he said this.” The story is always “someone is pissed off that he said this.” Letting it go is the only way to kill the story and get their message out of the public arena. Celebrities are people too. Some of them have well reasoned opinions. Some of them are complete whack jobs. Celebrities that have a reputation for being well informed on one particular issue or other are entitled to their opinion. Celebrities who consistently stick their foot in their mouths loose fans and people stop listening to them.

Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. A lot of opinions are bad ones. The only way to make sense of it all is to think for ourselves. On some level we all understand this. Want celebrates to shut up and go away? Stop listening to them. They aren’t covering the celebrity. They’re covering the drama. Stop complaining about them. Drop the controversy. The free market will take care of the rest. They’ll go away. Trust me on this one.

Think about it.