Silence truly golden from Cutler

Silence is an understated quality these days.

What used to be strong, silent Clint Eastwood is now noisy, nasty Charlie Sheen. What used to be run silent, run deep is now run silent, run tweet.

Which brings us to Jay Cutler, as most things involving the Bears must.

Cutler rarely has much to say, so maybe saying little came naturally between when the Bears’ season ended in January and training camp opened Friday.

Here’s a message to all those who thought Cutler should have spoken up sooner about criticism lashed at him for leaving the NFC championship game loss with a knee injury:

Just shut up!

Cutler didn’t know what to say so he said nothing on the subject, which is refreshing in this age of say anything, anytime on social media.

Cutler can be doubted for much, including his performance as Bears quarterback the past two seasons.

However, Cutler should receive a Nobel Prize for not responding to those who questioned his toughness.

Some NFL players, analysts and fans accused Cutler of football’s worst sin: Not being manly enough for this manly game.

Ridicule was heaped upon the same guy who had endured enough punishment to knock the snot out of the snottiest quarterback.

Bears teammates came to Cutler’s defense, but he resisted any urge to lash back at his detractors.

Say something, many urged Cutler. Say anything. Say that, yes, you are a macho man.

No, though. Cutler had nothing to say and chose not to say it. His silence shouldn’t be remarkable but is when instant insanity is the norm.

Instant insanity is how the whole controversy began, of course. Twits with Twitter accounts tweeted insults even before the Bears’ final loss to the Packers was complete.

It was like, you better blurt something right now or the thought will evaporate if you take a minute to think it over.

Journalists, politicians, entertainers, athletes, followers, friends, enemies … too many of us are guilty of converting snap judgments into snap stupidity.

Yet Jay Cutler went six months without a peep, much less a tweet, toward critics.

Why? Because he didn’t know what to say — still doesn’t, by the way — which wouldn’t have stopped many of us from saying it anyway.

Maybe Cutler was too busy during the off-season getting engaged to and then disengaged from his reality-TV star former girlfriend.

Let’s give Cutler more credit than that.

He can multi-task as well as anybody can. Maybe he can’t drive and text at the same time, but he likely could love ’em and leave ’em and tweet ’em all at once if he wanted.

Seriously, Cutler did what more of us should do (perhaps especially sports columnists). He dummied up, which indicated he’s mentally strong as well as physically tough.

All Cutler could think of saying when camp opened was that he really didn’t know how to respond to the bashers.

With society bombarded by a cacophony of social media commentary, finally somebody chose to take the novel path of less idiocy.

Now all Jay Cutler has to do is make some noise on the football field and lead the improbable Bears to the Super Bowl.

And maybe afterward speak up and tell us how he and they did it.

Silence should have its limits, you know.

mimrem@dailyherald.com