See No Donald, Hear No Donald

Dear Mr. Trump,

Consider this a farewell letter. Not because I’m not going anywhere—and nor, I assume, are you. (So much the shame.) But the announcement on Tuesday that your name was coming off both the list of potential presidential candidates and the Trump Marina Casino in Atlantic City … well those announcements just gave me the best idea:

I’m going to remove your name from my brain.

Let me be clear: I don’t just mean that I’ll never again spend time dreading the idea of a Candidate Trump or utter the words “Trump Marina Hotel Casino”—though the latter’s a given, since the casino is being renamed “The Golden Nugget.” (Who’d have ever guessed that the word “NUGGET” in brobdingnagian lettering hovering above the already blighted city would be a good thing?)

What I mean is that I’ve decided to erase you from my consciousness, to give you no more attention, ever.* I will not visit any of your casinos. I will flip the channel when I see you on my TV. I will not type the moniker Trump from here on out, and your name will no more pass my lips than I will read a single thing about you in the press. You are a man who seems to run solely on the fumes of fame, and so I will do my small part to extinguish that fame. Donald… who?

Sometime during the media storm over your absurd posturing as a serious candidate—you know, that time in which you, the Paragon of How To Do Things Right, accused the chosen leader of the free world of some sort of citizenship fraud or whatever that noise was—it occurred to me that, like Paris Hilton and the reality TV, you have but one thing to thank for your prominence: The old “all publicity is good publicity” adage.

You’ve proven that you would do anything for a little attention, from pretending to take seriously that island of misfit toys that is The Apprentice to attempting to expand the Trump brand into our real-life government. Like a slightly less evil Voldemort, it seems you get stronger and more certain of your sway every time someone says your name. And everyone—even your detractors!—has fallen for it. Trump, Trump, Trump, all of America has collectively droned throughout this whole presidential publicity stunt (which, coincidentally, led up to another season of your TV show), all the while unwittingly puffing you up like a giant, smug, poisonous blowfish. With hair.

But no more—at least not from this American. If a lack of attention is your kryptonite, then I’m queen of Krypton. From here on out, I’m boycotting the entire D—– T—- enterprise, and telling my friends to do the same. Maybe it will catch on. And then we’ll really see what happens when a hubristic, ridiculous, money-obsessed businessman falls in the woods, and nobody’s there to watch it. Personally? I think you’ll just be some guy with lots of money, in the woods, by yourself. And America will simply go on, never knowing the difference, living our lives in a world where the name Donald just brings to mind images of a cranky cartoon duck.

* Unless obligated to do so in order to remain a gainfully employed journalist who doesn’t always get to pick her stories.