I’m tired of talking about the shutdown and I’m tired of reading about the shutdown and I’m especially tired of hearing stupid joke after stupid joke about the shutdown.

There are about a thousand other stories in the world that we should be talking about. Like the fact that the governments of many Western nations, including our own, have developed the pesky habit of spying on their citizens and the citizens of other countries and collecting enormous amounts of information on these individuals with no apparent oversight. Or perhaps we could talk about the continually brewing violence in the Middle East and Africa. Maybe it’s time to address, again, the fact that the planet we are lucky to call home is melting under our feet and we can’t be bothered to do a thing to stop it.

Unfortunately, all of these items are currently off of the popular agenda as the news outlets suck in as much revenue as they can from this whole shutdown debacle–sticking shutdown clocks in the corner of their screens and replaying sound bytes while talking heads decry the state of our political discourse. Certainly, there is an interesting story to be told behind the shutdown, but I think we’ve basically covered it by now. CNN–we get it, you can stop.

Furthermore, the more attention the fanatical faction that masterminded the closure gets, the wider their maniacal grins become.

I know that it isn’t nearly as fun for anybody, but there comes a time when we have to stop politicking and actually get some policy done. Our world is slowly and quietly crashing down all around us. If we can just stop being petty and vapid for a few small moments there may be time yet to do something about it.

Sure, the 24-hour news cycle can be entertaining, but after serious consideration I’ve come to the conclusion that we might be better off if our government ran a little bit more like Newshour and a little bit less like Real Housewives.