Just. Make. It. Stop.

I have quit Sarah Palin.

No more clicking on links, no more watching her on teevee, no more pouncing on Twitter links or YouTubes or mashups. No more tuning in to Oprah or Barbara or Hannity (yeah, I watched, I admit it: I have a problem.)

I don’t care if her fans tear her limb from limb like the boys did in “Suddenly Last Summer” or if she starts holding fraudulent prize lotteries like Evita Peron. I don’t care if she goes ballistic on John McCain and campaigns for J.D.Hayworth for Senate in Arizona. Sarah’s Rainbow Tour — Christian Dior me, Lauren Bacall me, make a Caribou rose! — ends tonight, for me.

Those underlined Caribou Barbie references in posts? Those tempting hyperlinks to the Thrilla from Wasilla? Watertiger’s link-y threads? Those cryptic comments you leave at Tbogg’s? I’m done. Sure, I’ll still read my favorite sites, but I won’t go any deeper. I won’t click. I won’t. No more. No mas. Make. It. Stop.

Please?

My intelligent friends back in college often took pot breaks — they’d say “No, thanks, it makes me stupid!” I would wonder, “well, that’s kinda the point.” And that’s how I feel about Sarah Palin now. She makes me stupid. And full of despair. And I love America — and democracy! — too much to accept that she is its future. Especially only one short year since America decided its future was Barack Obama. She’s hurting America, just like Jon Stewart told those Crossfire yellers.

2008: Hope! Now: Dope?

2008: Change! Now: Petty harangues?
No thanks.

It’s gonna be easy to swear off Sarah and all the Palins: Levi Johnstons‘s underwhelming nekkid debut has happened, and I was waiting for that before I went cold turkey. There’s nothing more to see, nothing else to find out, no more worth knowing about Sarah Palin or from her family. Her contribution to my amusement has run its course. That itch is scratched raw. My funny bone is funned-out. I feel like I used to the day after Halloween: nauseous, cranky, stupid, recollecting previous encounters and realizing I knew better before it began. I was over the MJ-palooza long before it ended, too, but at least Michael Jackson made a contribution to the world’s music.

Can anything remotely similar be said for Sarah Palin? Does she enhance, uplift, enrich, engage, distract, redeem? I don’t think so. Not in a way that’s good for me, or for America. I watched “Network” again last night, for the first time since the mid-seventies (you should too!). And I learned one thing: we, the people formerly known as the audience, are responsible for our choices. I think.

So help a brother out, won’t you please? My first step is admitting I have a problem. Another is finding a supportive community that shares my shame. Let’s stop, together, shall we? Let’s exorcise her from our lives. Let’s leave her behind, together, all of us. We’ll all be better for it, and at least until the GOP signs a national suicide pact in 2012 by nominating her, so will America.

Join me, won’t you?

* Palinsanity h/t Matt Taibbi. Make this your last Sarah Palin click, I have!