Like so many others I was dismayed to hear of Heath Ledger's death. And when I heard that everyone’s favorite fool, Fred Phelps was ranting about Heath going straight to hell for playing a gay man. What? Is this guy nuts? My first reaction was to bombard him with outraged letters giving him a piece of my mind. But then someone made me take a deep breathe and stop seeing red for one minute. She was wise enough to remind me that that was exactly what Phelps wanted. He lives to cause outrage. It’s all he has.

Fred Phelps has no power. Zip. None. No one listens to him, there are no politicians anywhere who would align themselves with a man who pickets military funerals, no mainstream churches support him. I don’t think there’s anyone who would touch Fred Phelps with a ten-foot pole.

So I wont’ be deluging Mr. Phelps with enraged letters or joining pickets to have the man tarred and feathered, instead I will be doing nothing. That’s right. Nothing. That’s the worst thing any of us could do to Phelps. It deprives him of the audience he needs to vent. If Fred Phelps falls down in a forest does anyone hear him? The bonus is, if we ignore him maybe the media will probably grow a brain cell and stop feeding his mania. Face it, Phelps is a media darling. He can always generate headlines and sell papers. Fred Phelps is a horsefly on my butt and I will not longer give him the knee jerk reaction he craves.

So my challenge to everyone is Do Nothing. Let Phelps holler in the wilderness alone, a voice unheard in the wilderness of inanity.

It’s only what he deserves.